By Sheron Tita
Some 100 workers of Cameroon Development Corporation have engaged in a peaceful protest for non-payment of salaries.
The industrial action which began in the early hours of Tuesday 8 October in Tiko involved placard-carrying demonstrators chanting songs around the streets in the Municipality carrying along placards and appealing to the authorities to pay them monthly.
Some of the messages on the placards read: “We want monthly
Payments”, “CDC workers are Hungry”,” CDC Workers are paid once or twice a year.”
Despite facing numerous security challenges, the workers claimed they have continued to report for duty, but their efforts have gone unrewarded for several months.
One protester expressed the collective frustration, saying, “We go to work every day even with the security challenges, but when the month ends, the management tells us there is no money and that we should just continue to work.”
In the course of their protest, they threatened not to resume work until their salaries are paid.
Majority of the CDC workers are parents. This peaceful protest comes at a time when parents are expected to pay their children’s school fees amongst other commitments. Without the payment of salaries, the children of some of the workers might be sent back home due to non-payment of school fees.
The Cameroon Development Corporation is an agro industrial complex that grows, processes and markets tropical export crops. Its plantations cover at about 41000 hectares of land. The CDC used to be Cameroon’s largest employer, after the State, boasting 22,000 employees working in three agricultural sectors: oil palm, rubber and banana.
But when the ongoing Anglophone Crisis started in 2016, armed separatists began attacking workers of the parastatal, severely disrupting work and displacing thousands from their jobs.
The corporation eventually suffered huge losses, especially in the banana and rubber sectors, nearly causing its bankruptcy.
The CDC has been unable to regularly pay its workers since then, leading to regular protests among disgruntled laborers.
The government has pumped in billions of francs CFA to support the company to regain vibrancy, but it is yet to reach its pre-crisis level of productivity.
