Cameroon Dismisses Nearly 6,000 Public Servants in Latest Payroll Cleanup

By A.J.

In a move to purge ghost workers and streamline public finances, the Cameroonian government has removed 5,936 public employees from the state payroll, according to a statement made on November 27 by the Minister of Public Service and Administrative Reforms, Joseph Le.

The dismissals follow years of work under the physical census initiative known as COPPE launched in 2018, designed to verify the existence of state personnel and eliminate irregularities in employment and salary records.

Among those removed are 2,965 civil servants and 2,971 state employees governed under the Labour Code. According to the Ministry, COPPE has processed more than 8,000 disciplinary files so far, including cases of chronic absenteeism, unreported resignations, undeclared deaths, or failure to justify prolonged absence.

The mass purge carries significant implications for public finance. For years, state resources have been drained by salaries paid to workers who never showed up for duty, inflating the wage bill and constraining the government’s capacity to recruit new, legitimate staff.

Beyond disciplinary concerns, officials say the goal is to restore credibility to the public sector payroll and free up budget space for critical sectors such as health, education, and infrastructure, by ending what many have called “ghost payroll” abuses.

This latest wave of removals does not mark the end of COPPE: additional disciplinary actions and payroll reviews remain ongoing as the administration pushes for a permanent, clean payroll file ahead of the 2026 budget cycle.