Ahead of Labour Day 2016:

Disgruntled workers await Gregoire Owona in Limbe

Gregoire Owona

As the count down to the 130th edition of the International Labour Day, to be celebrated on Sunday 1st May draws near, anxiety is heightening amongst workers in Fako division where the national event is expected to be launched. 

                As soon as news made the rounds that the Minister of Labour and Social Security, Gregoire Owona will be launching activities in Limbe on Monday 25 April, several workers and staff delegates of some enterprises started mobilizing and strategizing on how best they can table their grievances to the minister without compromising their jobs.

                Many workers in companies around Fako disclosed to reporters that in their enterprises, labour laws and minimum wages are not respected. However, they are unable to complain because if they try to reclaim their rights, they are simply shown the door.

                One of the sectors where some of these workers are most angry is the NGO sector. According to our sources many NGOs now recruit highly qualified persons  as volunteers, only to enter the real qualifications as their project staff and permanent workers to grab huge sums of money from funders.

                These projects we gathered usually carry the real salaries of these workers , but the money hardly ever reaches them as they are given peanuts and threatened with sacks. A former worker of one of such NGOs in Buea who opted for anonymity recently disclosed that an NGO in Buea whose names we are withholding went as far as taking pictures of children in orphanages to receive containers of donations from Japan , only to go back to and only offer a few dresses to the children.

Another such quack NGO in Limbe is also said to be masquerading as a Human Rights organization, including the rights of workers. However, the workers in the same NGO are lamenting that they are working under deplorable conditions.                      Severally, they are forced to sign documents for huge sums of money that they have never received.

                Meantime, some elected officials in councils are clamouring for the payment of their emoluments as decreed by the Head of State recently while some workers are also claiming their shoe string survival must be redressed.

                Some teachers in Buea who were posted to some secondary schools sometimes back and have not started receiving their salaries are also raising hell that their transport allowances have been swallowed by a delegate who is going on retirement in June 2016 and who has been barred from transferring teachers.

                All these and more could end up on the table of the Minister of Labour and Social Security, whose visit to Limbe is seen by many as an opportunity to spill the beans.

The day will be celebrated under the theme: “social responsibility of enterprises and trade union in providing decent work”.