Despite promising to pay its workers’ salary arrears before Christmas, the Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC) failed to honour the promise.
Talking on CRTV South West’s program, “Issues,” this Saturday, December 28, the CDC’s General Manager, Franklin Ngoni Njie, instead blamed procedures for the salary delays.
He said the government had disbursed the money already but added that procedures caused the delay in payment.
Workers Must Have Bank Accounts
According to the General Manager, the CDC can only pay those who have provided bank accounts.
Out of over 20,000 workers, the manager said only about 7,000 have submitted bank accounts.
The corporation has been owing salaries of workers from 2018 to 2022.
Owing to its inability to pay this money, the government issued a bailout of FCFA 91 billion.
The amount included debts, social insurance, and arrears.
This money, owing to previous reports, was supposed to have been received before Christmas.
However, the CDC surprised workers by abolishing cash desks where they are paid handy, urging them to create bank accounts instead. Most of them do not have.
CDC Cassava Diversification Plan Collapsed
Last year, the CDC revealed that it was going to venture into cassava cultivation owing to its short-term maturity.
However, 2025 is just around the corner, and the diversification plan has not materialized.
Franklin Ngoni Njie explained that the corporation’s balance sheet was not convincing to financial investors.
According to him, CDC has been suffering financially, and will not want to invest amid debts.
However, he is hopeful that, with the bailout from the government, they can be able to attract investors.
Conflict Shrinks CDC Revenue
Before the Anglophone armed conflict, the CDC used to generate a revenue of over FCFA 50 billion.
But in the heart of the crisis, it could barely make up to FCFA 5 billion.
The conflict entered the plantation. As a result, workers were killed, kidnapped, and some had their hands chopped off.
Assailants also destroyed equipment in the plantation.
The recurrent insecurity drove away some workers, and that led to a shutdown of some estates, especially in Malende and Mbonge.
Also coupled with the fact that some crops in some estates had outlived their economic lifespan, the CDC’s revenue began to drop.
Now that the crisis is reducing, thousands of workers have returned to their job sites.
The company’s manager, Ngoni Njie, said if the CDC did not die in 2018 and 2019 when the crisis was at its peak, then it won’t die now.
Franklin Ngoni Njie is optimistic that Cameroon’s largest employer after the state will revamp and go back to its pre-crisis level.
