Cameroon – Yaounde: The National Printing Press staff on strike again.

Months of unpaid salaries, difficult working conditions in rooms where mice fall on your head from time to time, due to a ceiling dotted with holes, are among other denunciations vomited by the employees.

Stationary machines and empty offices are the face of the offices of the national printing press in Yaoundé on June 28, 2017. The employees, although present, chose to remain outside their offices throughout the day. Some of them settled alongside the building on the main façade of the national printing press. A peaceful strike whose purpose is to express their dismay was organised. The company, despite its centenary of service to the nation, is continually going through periods of crisis. As in 2015, the staff claims several months of arrears of wages.

These employees also denounce the delay in the change of category and the disastrous conditions in which they have been working for several years. Regarding these working conditions, it is not uncommon for employees to have a mouse fall on their heads, the ceiling in their offices being seriously dilapidated. It is also rare that their clothes are torn by the broken seats that they are forced to use.

Even access to the building is no small matter. Anything that demonstrates the inability of the general manager of the national printing press to find the appropriate therapy to eradicate these ills that have suffered the structure for many years. Nkomo Walter Paul has been appointed by presidential decree since May 25, 2015. Former school inspector of mathematics at the Ministry of Secondary Education, he replaced Gabriel Nna Abessolo, who died in November 2014 in Yaounde from illness.

The National Printing Press of Cameroon is a public company which is responsible, inter alia, for printing the official gazette, the documents of the different administrations, the documents of civil status (birth certificates, marriage, death), ballot papers, Leaflets of political parties during the presidential, legislative or municipal elections, etc.

Hence this reaction of one of the strikers in service to the national printing press for 34 years. She calls for a swift response to their grievances at the time of the next elections of 2018, already at point.

Source: Kmer Saga