The Cameroonian government is continuing its policy of combating the desertion of jobs by certain public officials. This is how 2,326 teachers attached to the Ministry of Secondary Education have been suspended on pay since January 2024.
These are “precautionary measures” taken against these staff “having been reported absent from their posts of work” and who have “evaded the justifications for their administrative positions”, according to a press release from Minister Nalova Lyonga made public on Wednesday January 17. According to the government member, these personnel suspended from pay were flushed out following the call for denunciation that she launched almost eight months ago. We remember that on May 30, 2023, Minesec had, by way of a press release, invited anyone with knowledge of teachers absent from their workstation to “report them anonymously” via a digital platform dedicated to this purpose.
The precautionary measures taken against these teachers could lead to the removal of these teachers from the Civil Service. Especially since, in his circular of December 28, 2023 relating to the execution of the 2024 Finance Law, the Minister of Finance, Louis Paul Motaze, announces from the current year “disciplinary measures of revocation or dismissal public officials who have remained suspended for four years.” On October 23, Nalova Lyonga declared that it had detected in its files 1,571 teachers declared to have abandoned their workstation. She then ordered them to come and clarify their administrative situation within two weeks, failing which disciplinary measures would be taken against them.
Teacher absenteeism is a real problem in Cameroon, not only in secondary education. In February 2022, the Minister of Basic Education , Laurent Serge Etoundi Ngoa, threatened sanctions against teachers absent from their workstations. “No one can tolerate their child going to a school where there are no teachers. People recruited with the help of our partners, by decision of the head of state, must work. They cannot make money without justifying it. We must reduce this type of behavior as much as possible,” he protested.
In 2022, the Minister of Civil Service and Administrative Reform, Joseph Le, declared that 8,766 public employees, most of them teachers, are under threat of dismissal. More than a thousand have already been removed from the civil service files, following the contentious phase of the physical counting operation of state personnel. This operation, initiated in 2018, aims to identify and expunge from the State payroll file all public employees who are irregularly paid due to an unjustified absence, resignation or undeclared death. Through this operation, Cameroon hopes to control the number of state agents for a reliable payroll.
SBBC
