Workers of the Cameroon Development Corporation started a strike movement yesterday to demand more security on work sites and the payment of 28 months of salary arrears. The movement is scheduled to last until May 10, according to the notice issued on April 25.

In a letter sent to the CDC top management and the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, the strikers also required that a staff representative be appointed within the company’s Board, per the resolutions taken during a meeting held in February 2017 with representatives of the Ministry of Labor and Social Security.

About the first demand, they say they have already lost 26 co-workers due to insecurity in the crisis-torn Anglophone regions, where CDC’s plantations are located. On the salary point, the strikers recall that they had a meeting on September 30, 2021 with the Prime Minister, during which their employer undertook to pay what they were owed. However, to date, they have not received anything. The meeting was held after a strike notice following a series of broken promises by the government.

CDC is among the companies most affected by the separatist war in the Northwest and Southwest regions. Its banana exports fell from 90,000 tons between January and November 2017, to 15,000 tons over the same period in 2021. According to a 2020 report by the Technical Commission for the Rehabilitation of Public and Para-public Sector Enterprises, the company’s losses were estimated at CFA18 billion.

L.A.