Kumba City Council Workers Offered Three Months’ Salaries following Protest

The Kumba City Council authorities have promised to pay protesting workers three months of salary arrears after workers stormed the streets on Wednesday to protest against nine months of unpaid salaries.

In order to address the workers’ strike, the ciity mayor, Gregory Mewanu, called for an urgent meeting whose aim was to address the strike action. The Council adopted the resolution on Thursday, September 21, during the crisis meeting presided over by Chamberlain Ntou’ou Ndong, the Senior Divisional Officer of Meme.

At the crisis meeting, the Municipal Treasurer, Effange Job, said that the nine-month salary debt in question was inherited from the former administration of the Council and that the incumbent regime has been striving to pay this debt progressively.

“After an audit from the Ministry of Finance, it was established on record that the Kumba City Council is owing nine months’ salary, distributed as follows: salaries in voucher forms from the month of March to September 2020, while there was a two-month overdraft at the level of the bank, making a total of nine months,” the treasurer said.

The City Council also announced that it will be able to pay workers for just three months for now, a decision that did not resonate with some of the disgruntled workers.

Speaking during the meeting, the spokesperson for the workers said, “If you send three months to the bank, it is still going to be difficult for us to meet up because we will be deducted from the four-month loans and overdraft from the three-month salary.”

The Senior Divisional Officer, on his part, urged the workers to always seek dialogue with their administration when things are not going well.

MMI reported how the Kumba City Council workers descended on the streets of Kumba on Wednesday with peace plants and placards and proceeded to lock down the Council building, demanding their unpaid wages.

In placards posted on the City Council’s gate, the protesters said their children could not go to school and they were about to lose their homes because they had no money to pay rent.

MMI could not confirm if the Kumba City Council workers resumed work today after yesterday’s meeting.