Teachers Association of Cameroon
Tac RELEASE
In the wake of sundry sombre developments in the educational sector in Cameroon of late, it behooves the Teachers Association of Cameroon (TAC)even in its state of reduced activity due to the Anglophone Crisis that has persisted since 21/1 1/2016, to come out of hibernation mode and make a number of comments. The present uncontrollable drift down an abysmal precipice can only but be attributable to government's lethargic responses to grievances raised by the teacher trade unions over time and the different disgruntled groups presently rearing their heads here and there with lethal potency, as well as to the apparent selective amnesia that informs its treatment of the different professional corps constituting the country's Public Service, treatment that leaves teachers with no option but to conclude that their noble profession the mother of all other professions is spited and treated with scorn.
Over the
years, teachers have had to down their tools a multiplicity of times over
shabby, shoddy treatment and engage in either sit-ins or in public
manifestations — over issues like the putting in place of a collective
convention for private education; the integration of all contract and
"contractualised" teachers of the basic, secondary, technical and
vocational setups; the integration of teachers of Sports and Physical Education
into the education corps; the upward revision of the research and documentation
allowance; the raising of the index bar or civil service exit point for
teachers many of who hit the bar (become "hors échelle ") and
continue working for more than a decade; the institution of the Academic Palms
award, etc.
Suffice it to indicate that
Presidential Decree No 035/05/2000 granted teachers a statutes worthy of their
noble profession right, which statutes would invariably have kept all these
grievances in check! Signed since 05/10/2000 by the Head of State, President of
the Republic, these statutes today in need of revision, have not gone
operational for want of a "texte d'application". During the Major
National Dialogue, a teacher representative is said to have raised the
non-operalisation of the teachers' statutes as a serious dereliction of duty on
the part of government, complaint which a Minister dismissed as improper,
pointing out that he as parliamentarian (PM) at the time the statutes were
prepared knows that any decree without a "texted'application" is
illegal! One indignant lady PM called him to order, unequivocally charging him
and his fellow PMS then for having embezzled state money by earning it
unjustifiably.
In the meantime, teachers continued
to make do with honorific enticements like Academic Palms, without accompanying
honorariums or even just the basic social security facilities needed for a
secure existence, the substantial issues among their grievances having always
been deliberately ignored. And so droves of teachers have continued to be
subjected to the wiles and political intrigues of successive ministers,
hell-bent on keeping them poverty-stricken and manipulable. The fact that the
teacher as employee has continued to be treated as a mere object and instrument
to be used and hardly ever consulted, and even if s/he has ever been engaged in
discussions, such discussions have always been informed from the onset by
and
has always resulted in outright deceit — this fact tells of the status of a
minion the Cameroonian teacher is given by the nation s/he serves dutifully.
Fast-forward to November 2016 crisis
that grounded all sectors of life in the North and South West regions of our
country, it seemed all was already being put in place for the holding of the
National Education Forum (NEF) that had been demanded and promised since before
2009! More than a dozen preparatory meetings were held within the framework of
an Inter-Ministerial Committee that had been created specially to prepare for
the prospect of the promised NEF. Teams of data collectors to the regions were
set up, tons of data were collected, sieved into streamlined reports and
submitted to the secretariat that had been set up for the work. Almost three
years after the data was submitted, it has become clear that this was another
scam. As time passes, sure mould gathers on the project and it becomes another
dream that cannot be realised because of administrative subterfuge.
The crisis in the North West and
South West regions, as per the United Nations, has rendered 3,200 schools
non-functional (see cover page of The Horizon, No 0671 of Thursday 17 March 20
2). Yet administrative officers have continued suspending salaries of teachers
on the grounds that they areAt aching in their school in areas whose access
today is near impossible and where permanent residence todayis akin to suicide!
Thus teacher in Ngoketunjia and Oku, like many •o•iuo missed the one or other
of the irksomely successive censuses especially because of the security perils,
have seen their salaries callously suspended in bursts of such administrative
high-handedness. While TAC agrees that salaries of those gone for greener
pastures should be suspended — interestingly, these are the ones who usually
survive such salary suspensions — it becomes a scandal that teachers without
easy access to their places of work who are still in the country and are making
efforts to work even in life-threatening circumstances, should suddenly be
deprived of the only means of survival for their families! Thank God we hear
the situation is being righted.
For over four weeks now, schools have been grounded in all the Francophone regions and in the Francophone subsystem of education as pathetic cries of indignation from teachers rent the air, embittered voices decrying long service spells in schools without salaries! These legitimate cries from North, South, East and part of the West, fuelled largely by the sorry story that trended of the hapless Hamidou, teacher of "Lycee de Beka" in the Faro Division of the North region, unfortunately climaxed with the death of this patriot, which further bedevilled the situation and made the striking teachers ever more determined! A hungry man is an angry man, the trite but urgently true statement says. And the threat these disgruntled compatriots pose to the nation today is one with lethal potency. The onus therefore is the government's to stretch its wits to the limit and so bring these actors to the table, the logical locus for resolving conflicts. There is a Sword of Damocles hanging over the nation's welfare and sincere discussions and concessions —
real, concrete, fathomable — need to
be exchanged in urgency Permit this paraphrase of Martin Luther King Jr as
fitting end for this release: the time is right to do right and the time is
always right to do right.
Done in Bamenda this 16th day of March, 2022.
Tameh Valentine Nfon
TAC National President
Edev Web News
Email: edevnewspaper@gmail.com/ francoeko@gmail.com
Tel: +237696896001/ +237678401408
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