Teachers Cancel Strike Action Following Minister’s Outing

The strike action announced by Cameroon’s Higher Education Teachers on October 14, 2023, has been called off following the response from Jacques Fame Ndongo, the Minister of Higher Education.

The university professors had indicated their intention to go on strike on October 5th in an effort to exert pressure on authorities to address their demands.

SYNES, the National Union of Higher Education Teachers, issued a press statement regarding this matter.

During the SYNES release, Higher Education Teachers, particularly those from the University of Bamenda, expressed their intention to emulate the OTS movement, which secondary school teachers spearheaded.

The lecturers requested payment for various additional responsibilities, which included teaching extra hours, supervising dissertations and theses, participating in defence juries, conducting semester exams, taking vacations, and receiving internal research bonuses.

Jacques Fame Ndongo, on October 17, 2023, urged the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bamenda (UBa) to address the concerns of the institution’s striking lecturers in a statement. Specifically, he requested that you present a payment plan to resolve the issue of their unpaid allowances. Additionally, he asked the rectors and vice chancellors of the country’s 11 state universities to organise institutional dialogues in accordance with a government resolution from now on.

The National Union of Higher Education Teachers (SYNES) recently announced that they decided to call off the strike action, as stated in their latest communique.

“SYNES invites teachers from all State Universities to the resumption of teaching activities from Monday, October 23, 2023, at 7 a.m., and urges them to be ready to return to school from Saturday 28 October 2003 the related data as well as the academic debt clearance schedule were no longer made available to teachers by the Minister of State, Minister of Higher Education,” the communiqué read.

They called off the strike action as they demanded the following:

• Taking into account teachers in a collaborative situation from the year 2024; (1) The effective transfer of the fourth tranche of the research modernization penalty

• The effective transfer of the fourth tranche of the research modernization penalty to all the beneficiary teachers at the same time

• Transparency in the keeping of academic debt statements at the level of each State University as well as the publication of a payment schedule from October 27, 2023.

The strike action, it should be noted, affected some universities, mainly the University of Bamenda, located in the North West Region of Cameroon.

Mimi Mefo Info