Fako SDO cowers CDC workers to suspend strike action at last minute

The Senior Divisional Officer (SDO) for Fako in Cameroon’s South West Region, Emmanuel Ledoux has orchestrated what some say is a witty move to interrupt a planned strike action at the CDC.

Workers of the Cameroon Development Corporation, CDC had expressed a series of grievances and promised to stage a strike action to make their voices heard. The strike action, they added, was pursuant to the authorities’ nonchalant reactions to their worries.

In addition to having unpaid wages for several months, Over 8,000 workers they said, are still home on technical leave and are being given no signs of an imminent return to work yet.

The families of some 20 workers killed as a result of the Anglophone Crisis, they added, have been neglected by the government and the corporation.

At the 11th hour, however, the administrator in a note to the CDC General Manager said the workers would be infiltrated and manipulated by terrorists if the strike action holds.

“I have been reliably informed that some employees of your Corporation plan to organize a strike action from the 12th to the 14th of October 2021,” he wrote.

“The same source,” the Administrator went on, “clearly indicates these workers would be infiltrated and manipulated by terrorist activities to instigate violence.”

He then urged the CDC General Manager to make the disgruntled workers aware that “… They shall be held responsible in case of any excesses, violence or the expression of pro-separatist conduct.”

Emmanuel Ledoux’s move comes amidst the last-minute meeting said to have been booked by the Prime Ministry, just to prevent the disgruntled workers from expressing their frustrations.

With the state of affairs uncertain at the moment given the government’s bullying and begging tactics, some workers say they fear their leaders might be corrupted and the strike action called off.

The CDC remains one of the institutions most hard hit by the armed conflict in the North West and South West regions of Cameroon.

It has lost billions, and witnessed a record drop in output, sales, and even payment of workers, laying off thousands.