Striking teachers send CONAC after Education Delegate

Disgruntled secondary school teachers in the Southwest Region have seized the National Anti-Corruption Commission, CONAC, to probe the Delegate of the Secondary Education, Francis Ngundu. The teachers expressed the wish for prompt action from CONAC before things run out of hand. Their grouse arises from what the term the “sidelining of names of teachers who did not ‘compile documents’ required to make them eligible for transports allowances.”

They have described the decision as a means to siphon their allowances. Before appealing to CONAC to intervene, the teachers had approached the Regional Delegation of Secondary Education in Buea where they were snubbed. They later marched to the Governor’s where the Secretary General, Clement Fon Ndikum, reassured them that their transport allowances would be paid.

According to the teachers, “While other Regions paid their En Cours d’Integration (ECIs) with no strings involved, the Southwest Region has introduced stumbling blocks.”

The teachers, awaiting integration, were posted to the Southwest Region on December 5, 2014 and re-deployed to the various colleges across the Region on March 2015. With the recent crisis, the young teachers say they are left with no option but to seek the timely intervention of CONAC to probe into the accounts from which payment of the said transport allowances were made.

A teacher, who gave his name as Stanley Buh Mai, said: “No ministerial text compels ECI teachers to compile any documents before they are paid but as a measure to embezzle the funds, some Regional Delegates like that of the Southwest Region have resorted to illegal instructions.”

Meanwhile, an official of the Personnel Office, Room 19, at the Regional Delegation, told the teachers: “Look at your name downstairs, just come and tell me your school and your number, for administrative reasons we don’t paste out information that has money. So, when your friends were making all that noise there it was uncalled for, you find the same file, for administrative reasons you don’t know who are passing around.”

The lists of names on the notice board of the Regional Delegation were photocopied with the column for amount left off. The teachers’ cry is coming at a time when Minister Ngalle Hernest Mebehe of Secondary Education is barely seven months in office.

They say it is time for him to set a learning example for subsequent law breakers to copy as they say this might just be one among several lapses in most of the Regional Delegations.