Keep your jobs, we are graduates, Cameroon youth to govt

More than 5,000 of the 25,000 young school leavers who were recently recruited into the public service have failed to show up to sign their employment contracts.

“I am a university graduate and they are offering me a monthly salary of $200 plus the equivalent of $40 as rents allowance. There is no way I can accept that kind of salary. Since graduating from the university, I have been farming in the village and what I earn from the farm is triple what they are offering me so I cannot accept that”, one of the recruits who sought anonymity told Africa Review.

Another recruit with a master’s degree said he refused to sign the contract when he realized that his salary and rents allowance put together come up to a total of about $276 a month.

“There are policemen and soldiers with the First School Leaving Certificate who earn $500 a month. Why should I with a master’s degree be offered $276? They are just insulting education in this country. They can afford to pay the police and military fat salaries because they use them to oppress and suppress the people so they can remain in power. This is unacceptable”, another said.

Mockery

According to the President of the National Syndicate of Public Service Workers, Jean Marc Bikoko, more of the recruits would eventually abandon their work places.
“Even those who in the euphoria of having got employment signed the contracts would eventually discover that the salaries they have been offered cannot meet their daily needs. And when they do so, they would desert their places of work”, Mr Bikoko said.

He says offering the equivalent of $300 as monthly salary to an individual with a doctorate degree amounts to mockery.
In February last year, President Paul Biya in his annual message to the youths announced that he had ordered the minister of Public Service and Administrative Reforms to recruit about 25,000 young school leavers.

The operation officially ended in October and the names of all those who had been selected from the over 350,000 school graduates who had applied, were published in the government daily Cameroon Tribune.

The recruits were initially given up to November 29, 2011 to report at the various regional governors’ offices to sign their employment contracts.
As at the expiry of that deadline, over 5000 of the new recruits failed to turn up at their stations.

A communiqué signed by the Chairman of the Supervisory Commission of the recruitment exercise eventually gave the 5,178 up to February 3,
2012 to sign their contracts but none of them has since reported to sign the contract.