The General Manager of Cameroon Development Cameroon, CDC, Franklin Ngoni Njie has dispelled rumours circulating that workers of CDC intend to organise an indefinite strike action, over unpaid salaries.

Franklin Ngoni Njie, General Manager, CDC

In a release dated Thursday January 21, the manager affirms that the planned strike action championed by the National Executive Committee of the Cameroon Agricultural and Allied Workers Trade Union, CAAWOTU, only involves a segment of CDC workers, notably those belonging to the union.

The planned strike action was wrongly interpreted by many, including most CDC workers, who thought that the entire worker’s population are to partake in respecting CAAWOTU’s industrial action slated for the first four days of February.

It was revealed that CAAWOTU, that called for the strike action, does not only have CDC workers as members, and as such, a strike action declared by the trade union cannot as such be interpreted to cover the whole of the CDC.

CAAWOTU’s decision to organise an industrial strike is motivated by the failure of competent authorities to hold a tripartite meeting. Rather than organising a strike action, CDC GM says the organisation believes in social dialoguing.

“While the Management of the CDC recognises the pivotal role of CAAWOTU in improving the terms and conditions of workers and giving workers a voice on national and policy debates through collective bargaining, it also believes in social dialogue in arriving at lasting solutions,” the release partly reads.

The GM beckons on workers and other concerned persons to be calmed and to continue working in collaboration with the corporation, in achieving their common goal.

CDC is one of the several corporations hard-hit by the on-going socio-political turbulence rocking the Northwest and Southwest Regions for the past four years. Analysis done in 2019 revealed that in 2018, CDC loss FCFA 32 billion as a result of crisis. The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Gabriel Mbairobe equally disclosed that the corporation has not been meeting its production target as a result of the crisis.

The GM once stated that the CDC needs FCFA 29 billion to regain its stamina as one of the leading agricultural producers in the nation.

The losses experienced by the organisation have adversely affected its workers. The workers have engaged in numerous strike actions soliciting for the payment of their wages especially as they risk losing jobs and source of income and livelihood.

Due to the on-going Cameroon Anglophone Crisis, many CDC workers have lost their lives, others have been victim of harassment, kidnapped and having their hands and other parts mutilated by suspected separatists’ fighters.

By Neville Mesumbe