The civil servants’ strike in Cameroon:Can the lot of civil servants improve under Biya?

By most standards the recent strike by civil servants in Cameroon was a failure, with a meager turnout of some one hundred activists. But an announcement by labour minister Robert Nkill summoning a meeting, quickly made its battered and intimidated organizers claim that it achieved its objective after all. It remains to be seen. Trouble is that it is the entire economy that has suffered long severe neglect causing stagnation, rocket-high unemployment, and ever-rising prices of consumer commodities. It becomes highly prejudicial simply to raise civil servants’ salaries at the expense of much else in the present context. This would be much welcome in a generally improved economic climate. The problem is the government’s will. Does the government really want to lift the masses form poverty? How did civil servants and the wide public in Niger Republic take to the streets for weeks on end early this year to protest against an unbearable rise in the cost of living?
How did the worker’s unions of Guinea Conakry successfully organize a sustained nation-wide strike to force reforms that brought about a non-regime prime minister with greater powers? How did ambulant traders in Dakar successfully challenge the Senegalese authorities to capitulate after the later inconsiderately cleared them form street pavements in downtown recently Dakar? In all these cases there were severe confrontations with law enforcement agents. In Guinea Conakry up to seventy people were killed. The good thing is that in all cases the people forced the government to make important concessions. Unpopular strike. As different from these cases the recent civil servants’ strike in Yaounde was not popular and its organizers and leaders did not have sufficient gut to face law enforcement agents who easily dispersed them.
Mobilization was at fault. Only about one hundred persons came out while the vast majority heeded to the ban of the labour minister. But had the one hundred odd demonstrators who turned up been sufficiently determined they could have played hero by non-violent resistance of law enforcement.
That non-resistance proved counter-productive. It played into the hands of the government and also further weakened the resolve of civil servants. After failing to persuade the government over a review of salaries, a strike would have been a useful pressure weapon only if its organizers were willing to display a little more nerve and go all the way.
It is not clear what the strike organizers meant to achieve by deciding to pitch camp at the National Assembly. Ostensibly, they had hoped to convey their plight to the deputies now in session, expecting they would in turn solicit the government for them. The organisers’ frustration and desperation could not have been better demonstrated than in this approach. Not only is the assembly a rubber stamp of the president, CPDM deputies that are in the overwhelming majority are also handpicked by the government. Yet, in spite of what looked like a disappointing outing, some of the demonstrators felt in the end they had succeeded to make their point when the labour minister announced a meeting to look into civil servants’ complaints. For a government much used to deceiving its citizens, the announcement was taken with a pinch of salt. Wasn’t it just another dilatory technique to appease the strikers and send them away? Repeated demands. If the government had in the last several years set aside the repeated demands of civil servant, would it have taken a poorly respected strike to get the authorities on their feet? Civil servants demand a reinstatement of salaries to the December 1992 level, followed by a 30% adjustment to cope with current price levels. In addition, they want a common 60-year retirement age for all civil servant as different from the current practice varying ages; viz, 50, 55, 60 and 65. If in the past the government hasn’t been able to raise salaries, now, the strikers believe, the government is well able. The recent census to weed out ghost workers from the government payroll, they argue, permitted the authorities to recover CFA 19 billion per month.
Moreover, continues the argument, the government has so far gained more than CFA 2,000 billon from debt relief deriving from Cameroon’s admission last year to the Highly indebted Poor Countries’ Initiative, HIPC. In 1993 government cut salaries twice and reduced many to barely a half, following a deep recession that was further compounded by a six-month general strike In Douala decreed by the new opposition parties intended to bring the government to its knees. Matters were further worsened for Cameroonians by a 50% devaluation of the FCA In January 1994. Since those very difficult days the government tried as soon as it could to settle arrears of months of unpaid salaries.
It could also in the same spirit gradually return salaries to their pre-1993 level. It didn’t. Neither did it consider making adjustments for the devaluation. Public finances under Biya have never been at their best. A long recession shrank the economy and government has been slow to adopt the bold measures that stimulate expansion. To complicate matters, the government, In want of a big budget, applies high taxes, then uses brutal methods to collect its revenues. The result is never as good as it could be. Long neglectEven then, with the right will, much could over the years be achieved. It is that will that appears to be absent. The long neglect of civil servant’ remuneration has combined with other neglects to produce a socioeconomic situation so complex that simply plucking up salaries alone couldn’t be the answer. A much shrunken economy with excessively high unemployment and an ever-galloping cost of living is the wider context of the salaries problem. Biting as it might be, any attempt to resolve it directly would instantly provoke an uncontrollable hike in prices, making nonsense of the exercise.
A gainful increase would only take place in a generally better economic climate. A bold and sustained effort to bring down the cost of essential commodities; a generous injection of credit to stimulate micro, small, and medium scale activities are among some of the polices that can turn things round in a relatively short time. In the medium and long terms there is urgent need for self-reliant development which focuses on creating local substitutes for imported commodities. Bread, for instance could easily be made from locality grown cereals or sweet potatoes as in the North West. Beer and ales could be made from a variety of maize locally grown. Such shifts in consumption actually create work for Cameroonians, save money that otherwise goes to foreign farmers. It is within a generally improved economic climate that a salary increase in an economic sector would be gainful to its beneficiaries and not have a harmful effect on the whole economy. That change of climate can take place in a short time given the necessary bold and pointed policies. If it lacked the means in the past, the government is better able today than it ever was. But the real question is whether the government has the will to lift the masses from poverty – beyond sloganeering.

Courtesy - The Herarld