Fostering Bilingualism, Living Together:

Bilingualism Commission Opens Branches In Regions

By Doh Bertrand Nua in Yaounde

RT Hon Mafany Musonge presiding over ord. session of NCPBM

The chairman of the National Commission for the Promotion of Bilingualism and Multiculturalism, NCPBM, has revealed that the first regional branches of the institution will effectively go operational in 2020.

                Peter Mafany Musonge made the revelation in Yaounde Tuesday 17 December 2019 at the institutions head office. This was during the second ordinary session of the commission which focused among other things on reviewing the road covered by the Commission in 2019 and adopting the 2020 action plan of the body.

                Commission members agreed to step up the momentum in enhancing the practice of bilingualism and living together across national triangle because the institution has a vital role to play in the second phase of Cameroon’s 2035 emergence vision.

                The regional branches will focus on reviving the ‘listen to the people’ missions in the remaining eight regions, step up follow-up missions on the sound implementation of the constitutional provisions on the practice of bilingualism in public entities among other things, Chairman Musonge said.

                He reiterated the central role the commission is called upon to play in the implementation phase of the governance component and especially in the social and cultural policy sector based on challenges facing the country’s bilingualism.

                While pledging the commission’s collaboration with some civil society organisations in 2020, Musonge charged chairpersons of the institution’s working groups to actively take part in the exercise and contribute to fast-tracking living together and the promotion of bilingualism and multiculturalism as desired by President Paul Biya, and hence providing a definite solution to the crisis in the Northwest and Southwest regions.

                He recalled that in 2019, the Commission actively participated at the Major National Dialogue, took part in participatory consultations for the drawing up of the second phase of the country’s 2035 vision, reached out to the diplomatic community in Yaoundé, undertook missions to identify structures that will host its regional offices in the Northwest, Southwest, Littoral, West and South regions and other delegations from across the world that came visiting within which experiences were shared on ways to end the bloodbath in the English-speaking regions.

                The former PM said the commission brainstormed on a day of living together, a symposium on multiculturalism, foreign missions to Canada, a media campaign against hate speech which inspired the drafting of the bill criminalizing hate speech and tribalism and took part in drafting a bill on official languages in Cameroon.