CAMAIR excluded from air transport association

The image-tarnishing ejection has been tagged to the ailing company’s lengthening failure to step up
security and allow independent operations auditing

By Ntaryike Divine, Jr. in Douala

Barely a month after new managers were designated at the befuddled national carrier CAMAIR, the company
that is yet to resume flights has been dealt a damaging blow. The International Air Transport Association, IATA, has excluded CAMAIR from its list of members.

Reasons for the image-tarnishing ejection pronounced last week have been hinged on prolonged security
lapses and other pitfalls in the administrative management of the ailing company. Concretely, IATA
blamed CAMAIR for the inexistence of viable accounts and reluctance to conduct an independent audit of its
operations over the last four years.

It also expressed worry over maintenance and the ageing nature of craft used by the company. The IATA
decision indicates the association is keen on shedding blame in the event of an accident suffered by CAMAIR.
The association advocates meticulous respect of air transport standards. Statistics hold that while air
transport in Africa represents a meagre 4 percent of worldwide figures, the continent.

In 2006, CAMAIR appeared on a blacklist of 92 airliners barred from European skies. Thanks to
vigorous negotiations, the government overturned the ban. But observers say last week’s ejection of CAMAIR
from the IATA membership list reiterates the lack of real political will to overhaul the carrier whose
planned privatization has snail-paced endlessly.

On the back of an IMF mission to Cameroon last month, CAMAIR’s three-year-serving provisional ambassador,
Paul Ngamo Hamani was fired in a terse presidential decree. The company activities were grounded for over
a week and upon his appointment as director-delegate, Adolphe Sammet Bell announced resumption of operations beginning with domestic flights two days later. But CAMAIR planes are yet to take to the air since
mid-March.

The IATA decision thus adds to customers’ waning confidence in the 37-year-old airliner drenched in
debts valued at over 70-billion-FCFA. The company that costs the state some 3 billion FCFA monthly to manage
also lacks craft of its own. It has still not cleared outstanding fuel debts valued at some 2 billion FCFA.
Only last February, Total Cameroun and Shell fuel suppliers refused to serve the company from unpaid
bills obliging the grounding of craft for several days.