Cameroon:Workers’ strike cripples Douala Airport

Flights were not allowed to take-off and inward bound flights were forced to make U-turns

By Yemti Harry Ndienla

Though the situation had returned to normal a 48-hour strike recently engaged by air traffic controllers at the Douala International Airport since seriously hampered incoming and outgoing flights. Airliners and passengers remained grounded while inward bound planes either made U-turns or simply canceled flights to Douala.

Airport personnel said a Douala-bound Air France flight failed to arrive on schedule while a Bellview airliner from Nigeria made a U-turn. Other planes decided to land in neighbouring Equatorial Guinea for fear of mishaps, while players of Cotonsport of Garoua en route to Nigeria remained stranded at the airport for want of a plane.

The striking workers all included staffers of the Cameroon subsidiary of the continent-wide agency for air transport security, ASECNA. The agency’s Cameroon country director, Pierre Tankam, who described the development as very unfortunate, said the striking air traffic controllers had made just a single demand.

“They are demanding that the diploma required for access to the training of air traffic controllers should no longer be the GCE Advanced Level, but at least second-year university training. It’s a very pitiful situation for our country,” he told the Herald newspaper.

The Cameroon ASECNA workers’ strike followed a similar one engaged by their colleagues in Libreville, Gabon, and yet another by the agency workers in Niamey, Niger who laterhad their pay increased by 6 percent.
Pierre Tankam said these were the only countries of the 18-member agency engaging the strike.

Five of the ASECNA Cameroon striking workers who decided to furnish only minimum service were arrested and detained by police for “disturbing public peace,” under instructions from Littoral governor Fai Yengo Francis. He had advised them to no avail to continue working fully between 30 July and 20 August; time enough for their grievances to be fully examined and definitive solutions reached.

Meanwhile two of the workers were only released a day later, following pressure from their lawyer Ndeffo Levis to participate at discussions at a crisis meeting. But the negotiations apparently did not yield fruit as the governor named a 15-man team of air traffic controllers to replace the striking workers until 20 August.