Public Service Exams and Income Generation in Cameroon

Cameroon organizes dozens of selection tests for entrance into training centres and professional schools every year. Examinations for the 2010 season begun with the Common Entrance into secondary schools, General Certificate of Education (GCE) Ordinary and Advanced levels, and First School Leaving Certificates (FSLC), for English speaking Cameroonians.

Christopher Fon Achobang

As always, a multitude of candidates will be queuing in front of different offices to register for these examinations. Usually candidates will have to produce certified copies of all their credentials; birth certificate, school certificates. The more certificates you have, the more stamps you have to buy to obtain government signatures. Even with government officials signing the certified copies of certificates, you will need a trip to the Senior Divisional Officer (SDO) or the Governor to authenticate that you actually presented the originals of the certificates which have been certified.
The list of papers, not older than three months, then swells when a medical certificate, certificate of non-conviction, certificate of height is obtained over the counter without meeting any of the competent authorities. To crown it all, candidates have to pay from at least FCFA 10,000 by post office money order to the authority organizing the examination. The post office (CAMPOST), today, managed by a French national imposes the amount of postage stamp you stick to a self-addressed and stamped envelope.
As I went to register a cousin, holder of a FSLC, for the entrance into the school of penitentiary personnel, I realized how the government of the Republic of Cameroon has transformed these selection tests into income generating activities. The state is the main beneficiary while many private businesses jump in to reap from the free for all examination bonanzas.
First School Leaving Certificate, the main certificate for candidates aspiring to become prison warders has not been issued in Cameroon since 1998. Only attestations are delivered in lieu of the certificate. To obtain this attestation, candidates are requested to pay FCFA 1,000 at the regional delegation of basic education. At the South West Regional Delegation where I paid the money no receipt was issued. Well, you pay the money or you walk away and miss the examination. The question you may want the regional delegate to answer is whether the huge examination fee paid is not enough to produce an ordinary attestation. Behold, some candidates for this lowest rank of penitentiary personnel will be university graduates, making nonsense of the FSLC.
Certificates of Non Conviction or police report not older than three months have to be obtained from the chief town of candidate’s division of birth or from Yaoundé. My cousin, like most candidates born in the adjoining landlocked divisions of the South West Region know it is hell to get to their divisional headquarters. Only Limbe for Fako Division and Kumba for Meme Division are accessible by road during the raining season. Curiously, registration for most of these examinations is launched at the beginning of the raining season. Candidates cannot request a certificate of non-conviction in anticipation as it is not supposed to be older than three months. The justice and police departments should have a database of police reports. None seems to exist in Cameroon as former convicts have become ministers and allowed to manage sensitive positions where they end up embezzling tons of money. With the noise about decentralization of the public services in Cameroon, people born in Mudemba, Bangem, Mamfe or Allou should be able to obtain this formality of non-conviction certificate from Buea where they have to deposit their registration files. This practice of going back to the place of birth to be counted, closely resembles the Biblical return of Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem for a census, which ended up with baby Jesus being born on the way over 2000 years ago. Today, many pregnant women miscarry on the way to hospital in these landlocked divisions.
Post Office Money Orders are an indication that an examination registration fee has been paid and that it will be delivered to the competent examining authority. For the penitentiary personnel selection tests, the announcement signed by the Minister of Justice stipulated that the fee to be paid is FCFA 10,000. But by the time candidates went to deposit their files, they were informed that it had been announced over the radio that the examination fee had been increased to FCFA 15,000. To forward this amount to the director of penitentiary authorities CAMPOST charges FCFA 1,500 for services. If you had first paid FCFA 10,000, by the time you went back for FCFA 5,000 you need to pay another FCFA 1,500. At the end of the day you would have paid FCFA 3,000 to wire FCFA 15,000 to the Director of Penitentiary authority in Yaounde.
Self Addressed Stamped Envelopes are destined for the return of registration materials in the case where a candidate failed to make it through the unpredictable selection process. Rarely does anybody bother about what happens to the files of those who have failed. You will meet cookie vendors using them as parceling papers on our street corners.
The value of the postal stamp is supposed to be the cost of transporting printed material locally. Postage stamps for mails within Cameroon cost FCFA 125. Post office staffs claim the amount which is needed for the penitentiary personnel entrance is FCFA 500, stating that if this was not paid, nobody will transport a candidate’s file to Yaounde. This cooked up story fails to explain that the postal service has to dispose of the thousands of stamps printed in 2005 worth FCFA 500 bearing the effigies of President Paul Biya and Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan. With the advent of the internet and the unreliability of the postal services, people stopped posting letters through the post office. To make my frustration worse, I met a friend who was mailing a letter to Paris using only a FCFA 250 worth of postage stamp.
Certificate of Height indicates that a candidate is over 160 cm tall. This is the minimum height for pretenders to the uniformed corps (police, army, gendarmerie, warders). After waiting for two hours and buying a fiscal stamp of FCFA 1,000, the identification agent simply filled 1 m 65 cm even though candidate’s identity card showed 1 m 70 cm. The agent explained that 1 m 65 cm was the normal height for females. After insisting that he either respects the height on the identity card or he proceeded to measure the height again, our agent was not patient enough to repeat the formality as he went ahead to write out the height on the identity card.
Attestation of presentation of originals must be issued exclusively by the SDO or the Governor. Though forms for this attestation are sold everywhere, the clerks at the governor’s office claim the governor does not sign handwritten documents. Woe betides you if you had filled out one and francked (automatic fiscal stamping with a machine) it at the treasury or passport service of the police station. The process has to start all over again. In Buea you have to give FCFA 500 to the typist in the governors’ office for the form and then go to the Divisional Office (D.O) for the fiscal stamp. Here the fiscal stamp, since it is the old format which is transferable, is sold at FCFA 1,100 and not 1,000. The D.O. explains that it costs an extra FCFA 100 because it is somebody’s private business. Why will a private business be lodged in a public office? Former D.O. Kuemo Simon of Buea sub-division claims he has struggled to stop the business, unsuccessfully.
Let me end the list of worrying practices you notice in the government organized public service examinations not even the deserving candidates are presented as passing the examination. By the end of the day, government agents beat their chests for collecting millions for the government treasury. Some private individuals also jubilate after extorting money from the gullible and eager candidates. Adjacent mafias also creep up, promising to facilitate candidates’ success in different public examinations requesting a bribe to be paid to someone in the corridor of power.
Of the tens of thousands registering for the warders’ entrance examination only 410 are needed. Even so, the dateline to deposit registration files will be postponed to allow more candidates to register. Officially, the reason is to give late candidates more time to register. But the undisclosed reason is not to close the doors so that more money can be collected from the wretched of the earth for ‘government’. Many candidates confess they go to all sorts of extremes to raise the amount needed for the examination. Averagely, a candidate spends over FCFA 40,000 to have a complete file for one of the many concours launched in Cameroon. Quite some revenue for the State, isn’t it? Indeed bleeding the poor to transfuse the rich.
Wonder is that while the Cameroon government campaigned and qualified as a Heavily Indebted Poor Country, it does not consider Cameroonians as poor and wretched. Every day, government evolves new schemes to impoverish citizens. Little wonder that the results of some of these concours are not published more than 24 months after. Even when they are published, names of some folks who never sat for the examination are declared as successful.