NW Governor Warns Absentee Teachers of Heavy Sanctions

Cameroon’s North West Governor, Adolph Lele Lafrique Tchoffo Deben, has sent a stern warning to teachers, whom he accused of receiving pay for no work done since the Anglophone Crisis erupted.

Lele Lafrique was speaking during the North West Sector Conference and the launching of the academic year 2023-2024 in Bamenda on Wednesday, August 23rd, 2023.

He said the teachers should ensure that the children feel their impact this school year and warned that sanctions await defaulters.

“Measures will continue to be taken this academic year to sanction teachers who will not answer present at their duty posts while earning a salary,” Governor Lele said, adding that teachers “should discipline themselves and be available for the children when schools resume come September 4 and Justify the salaries they are earning because many of them are still benefiting from the state coffers without justifications,”

Teachers, for their part, have blamed the deteriorating security situation in some parts of the region for being the reason why they have not been able to go to their various schools.

According to this teacher from a government school in Ndop, Ngoketunjia Division who did not want to be named for security reasons,

“It’s not like we don’t want to work. We were kidnapped once, and we had to pay ransom and promise never to return again before we were set free. No one compensated us, and no one even sympathised with us, yet they are using us as a yardstick to measure how good or bad the security situation in the crisis-hit regions is. Our lives also matter,” she cried.

To ensure that teachers are present in school from day one of the 2023–2024 school year, Governor Lele said all has been put in place to safeguard the effective school year.

The ongoing Anglophone Crisis, which is disturbing lives in the restive regions of Cameroon, has caused the deaths of both teachers and learners.

Schools have been touched, and some have been abandoned in the bushes. The situation has been normalising recently as some separatist groups have decided to allow mostly community groups, schools, and those owned by religious bodies and private individuals to function.

Government schools have remained shut down and abandoned in the bushes in many parts of the restive regions since 2017, when the crisis morphed into a bloody armed conflict.