Basic Education Minister Laurent Serge Etoundi Ngoa has ordered state employees working for other institutions while drawing salaries from his department to justify their positions by March 15th. Failure to comply will result in the suspension of their salaries, the minister warned in a statement issued on March 1st.

This move is part of Ngoa’s initiative to streamline the ministry’s payroll in line with the President of the Republic’s repeated calls for the government to rationalize public expenditure. As of June 30, 2023, the state payroll comprised 379,020 active employees and 157,717 pensioners, as per the 2024 Finance Law. The Ministry of Secondary Education employs the largest share of state civil servants at 26.1%, followed by the Ministry of Defense (17.9%) and the Ministry of Basic Education (14.7%), which accounts for 16.25% of the state’s wage bill.

Since 2018, the government has been implementing measures to eliminate irregularities and undue salary collections by public employees, aiming to control the workforce and wage bill. An inter-ministerial committee has been established to maintain the process of updating the state’s payroll file, ensuring it only includes duly recruited public servants with appropriate administrative and salary situations. A physical count of government personnel conducted between April and June 2018 revealed over 10,000 fictitious civil servants costing Cameroon XAF30 billion annually, according to the Ministry of Finance.

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