Society

At the time Yaoundé welcomed enthusiastically the presidential couple after a private stay in Europe, the General Manager of the Cameroon Radio and Television (CRTV) was given a lengthy interrogation at the Special Criminal Court. Justice Annie Sorelle Bahonoui kept Amadou Vamoulké the whole day seeking information that will help send Prof. Gervais Mendo Ze to prison and by extrapolation Amadou Vamoulke. It was also the second meeting between Justice Bahonoui and Vamoulké after formal charges were served to him on February 17 by the same court, after two hours of hearing, for embezzlement in coaction with his predecessor Gervais Mendo Ze, currently behind bars.

Cameroon Concord’s Chief intelligence Officer in Yaoundé has revealed that the General Manager of the Cameroon Radio and Television will be arrested soonest. He observed that his arrest is expected before the next hearing by the investigating magistrate on a date that has not been specified. Amadou Vamoulke who arrived at the head of CRTV on January 26, 2005 with the slogan "modern management” is now heading towards his end.  Mr. Vamoulké has already been the subject of more than 15 management controls and we understand the company's financial commission has detected a "budget hole" amounting to 15.450 billion CFA francs. Interestingly, Amadou Vamoulké continues to sign his own mission orders in violation of the law which makes it the sole prerogative of the Chairman of the Board of Directors.

Cameroon Concord gathered that a monitoring report of 31st December 2006 revealed CRTV had 2,097 part time staff including 2,054 permanent work force. In November 30, 2007, the Agency had 2022 staffs with 121 not reported in the official wage statement. Vamoulke has also been accused of a deal that involved the acquisition of 14 transmitters. Only 4 transmitters were delivered. The famous renovation of the sealing system of the production centre at Mballa II was another story. It is now believed that it was a ghost contract assigned to a company Nicam.  Sources close to the Special Criminal Court have told Cameroon Concord that Mr. Vamoulke is en route to Kondengui.

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Ngwa Bertrand

30.Mar.2015

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8 police officers caught in a scam crime and extortion of candidates who applied for the recent police entrance examination were arrested on Saturday. The officers have been charged with extortion of money from dozens of candidates vying to join the police force.

Cameroon Concord has learnt from highly placed government officials in Yaoundé that over four thousand applicants have been scammed and made to purchase fake tickets at the National Police Academy by the arrested police officers. A police officer even used the surname of the Delegate General for National Security to prove to some of the candidates that he was the Private Secretary to Mbarga Nguele, the national police boss. Those arrested included two police commissioners and 2 female constables.

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Ngwa Bertrand

29.Mar.2015

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France has announced a donation of 1.5 million dollars to support the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in its mission in Cameroon. The French decision was made public via a press release from the French diplomatic mission in Yaoundé. The French gesture Cameroon Concord understands is in solidarity with refugees that have flooded the Far North region and also displaced victims of the Central African crisis.

The money will be distributed between refugee assistance programs in the Central African Republic on the one hand and people fleeing the atrocities of the Nigerian Islamic sect, Boko Haram. The French also noted that 500,000 dollars will soon be paid by France to the UNHCR to help finance immediate actions in Cameroon and Chad. We of this publication are thanking the French for this goodwill gesture.

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Ngwa Bertrand

28.Mar.2015

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The Prime Minister, Head of Government, His Excellency Philemon Yang, on the 26 March 2015 chaired an important Cabinet Meeting in the main building of the Prime Minister’s Office complex. In attendance were the Vice-Prime Minister, Ministers of State, Ministers, Ministers-Delegate and Secretaries of State. Three statements featured on the agenda, namely:

1. The statement by the Minister for Sports and Physical Education on the “Achievements and Challenges of the Physical Education Promotion Policy”;

2. The report by the Minister for Livestock, Fisheries and Animal Industries on the first results from the “Implementation of Second-generation Agriculture in the Livestock and Fishery Sub-sector”;

3. The statement by the Minister for Housing and Urban Development on the “Building and Housing Standards in Cameroon”.

The Minister in charge of Sports indicated that the Physical Education Promotion Policy had changed significantly in the last few years. The attendant transformations were in line with the recommendations of the Sports and Physical Education Forum, organised in Yaounde from 27 to 30 November 2010. The corresponding landmark law of 15 July 2011 forms the corner-stone of that policy. Teaching methods and physical education programmes in schools were renovated while the status of physical education was upgraded in school curricula and official examinations, by a Prime Ministerial Order signed on 10 September 2012. All these innovations have raised students’ interest in physical education. Although they now receive all allowances granted to other secondary school teachers, physical education instructors are still in short supply, with a ratio of 1 instructor for 700 students in government schools. Furthermore, only 45.33% of Government schools have these instructors with wide regional disparities observed. The minister revealed that the question of sports infrastructure in schools remains very disturbing due to non-compliance with the provisions of Law No. 74/22 of 5 December 1974 relating to sports and socio-educative facilities, which makes the presence of sports installations obligatory as part of the creation of schools.

Broaching physical education outside the school milieu, the Minister in charge of Sports recalled that the relevant government policy is based on the strong recommendations of WHO and UNESCO. He situated in this context the institutionalization of the National Physical Education Day celebrated on the first Saturday of the month of June for the past nine years. This symbolic awareness-raising action is supplemented by an infrastructural approach backed by the Head of State, donor of the Parcours Vita sports facilities in Yaounde, Douala and Bamenda. These reference facilities will be supplemented by sports/leisure platforms in some other secondary towns thanks to the signing of framework agreements as part of the partnership between the Ministry of Sports and Physical Education and FEICOM.

After the ensuing debates, the Head of Government instructed the minister to increase the supply of physical education in and outside the school milieu. The Cabinet Meeting proceedings continued with the report of the Minister for Livestock, Fisheries and Animal Industries, which revealed that four years after the Ebolowa Agro-Pastoral Show, the “implementation of second-generation agriculture in the livestock and fisheries sub-sector” is promising. Three programmes implemented by his ministry namely: (i) Development of animal production and industries; (ii) Improvement of animal health coverage and zoonotic disease control; and (iii) Development of fishery productions, actually foster the quantitative and qualitative development of the national supply of animal proteins.

He noted in that regard that key animal husbandry stations have been rehabilitated, high-yield spawners imported while insemination techniques are gradually disseminated. Prospects for dairy production are bright, thanks to the dairy production development component of the Agricultural Productivity Improvement Programme. The minister pointed out that the Agropoles Programme allowed for the creation of a poultry agropole in Bomono-Douala, a pork agropole in Kribi and a fish agropole in Bankim. He also mentioned other noteworthy actions undertaken in terms of financing, training and supervision of farmers. With regard to the exploitation of fishery resources, the imminent commissioning of the Limbe Nautical and Fishery Trades Institute will foster the modernization of techniques.

In apiculture, the completion of the labeling process of Oku White Honey as a geographic indicator of the African Intellectual Property Organization (OAPI) will enable beekeepers to make in-roads into international markets. Charting immediate prospects, the Minister in charge of livestock mentioned the industrialisation of the bovine, porcine and poultry sub-sectors as part of the Contingency Plan for fast-tracking growth which made it possible to build modern slaughter-houses and cold stores. He also mentioned the numerous job opportunities in the sub-sector under his charge, especially as part of the Youth Entrepreneurship Promotion Project to be implemented in the coming six years for a total cost of CFAF 33.5 billion and 20,160 direct jobs created by 2021.

The Prime Minister’s instructions to the Minister for Livestock, Fisheries and Animal Industries aimed at improving conditions for implementing various programmes in his ministry, which guarantee an increase in animal and fishery productions. Lastly, the floor was given to the Minister for Housing and Urban Development for his statement on applicable building and housing standard. He made a distinction between technical standards of manufacture and use, on the one hand, and legal standards, on the other hand. Both categories of standards are tools used for the sustainable and controlled development of towns in a context where Cameroon registers an urbanisation rate of over 52%.

Standardisation in construction and housing makes it possible to (i) structure and supervise the sector through standard products and procedures, (ii) streamline costs through economies of scale, (iii) industrialise production and especially (iv) ensure the safety and security of constructions and installations. The assessment presented by the Minister highlighted the existence of disparate legal standards, different legislations and regulations, whose consolidation is envisaged in the Housing and Construction Code.

The Standardization and Quality Agency (ANOR) made it possible to adopt 201 international technical standards on constructions, which were approved in 2014. Since 2002, the Local Materials Promotion Authority has, for its part, approved six national standards on materials, including clay bricks. After this statement, the Head of Government asked the Minister in charge of housing to complete the drafting of the Housing and Construction Code.

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Ngwa Bertrand

27.Mar.2015

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One of the two pilots of the doomed Germanwings Airbus A320 passenger aircraft, which plummeted in the French Alps, killing all 150 people on board, was locked out of the cockpit before the plane’s crash and was unable to get back in, an official says. Evidence from a cockpit voice recorder recovered from the crash site late Tuesday, several hours after the crash of the low-cost flight from the Spanish coastal city of Barcelona to the German city of Duesseldorf, indicated that one of the pilots had left the cockpit and could not re-enter, an official involved in the investigation said on Thursday.

In the data from the voice recorder, analyzed Wednesday afternoon, the pilot outside was heard “knocking lightly on the door, and there is no answer,” the investigator, speaking on condition of anonymity, said. “And then he hits the door stronger, and no answer. There is never an answer.”  

The official said the pilots were conversing normally in German at the beginning of the flight early Tuesday. However, after the sound of knocking “there was no more conversation” until an alarm indicating the proximity of cruising altitude could be heard before the aircraft suddenly began a fatal eight-minute plunge.

“We don’t know yet the reason why one of the guys went out,” said the official, adding, “But what is sure is that at the very end of the flight, the other pilot is alone and does not open the door.”

During a news conference on Wednesday, the German flag carrier Lufthansa’s Chief Executive Officer Carsten Spor said that the crash was inexplicable. Meanwhile, Rémi Jouty, the director of the French Aviation Bureau of Investigations and Analyses, said that it was too early to determine the cause of the crash. Although terrorism has not been ruled out, Germany’s Interior Minister Karl Ernst Thomas de Maizière said there was no “hard evidence that the crash was intentionally brought about by third parties.” French officials also said terrorism appeared unlikely.

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Ngwa Bertrand

26.Mar.2015

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Cameroon television like the ruling CPDM party is 30 years old! The similairities end there . This anniversary has provided an opportunity for CRTV icon, Charles Ndongo to revisit the course of this medium, analyze its present and examine its future. The news director of TV antenna Cameroon radio and television (CRTV) has the memory of an authentic eye witness and observer. In his opinion expressed in Mutations published March 24, 2015 and dedicated to the 30 years of public television. The legend of the Cameroonian TV observed that CRTV continues to suffer from the defects of insufficient technical expertise and language of work.

The former "journalist of the president" said television promoters are merely interested in personal gain and careless about their audience. He deduced that "it is very tempting to conclude that television in Cameroon refuses to grow up." Charles Ndongo, thinks that instead of reveling in the dispute and rivalry, local television stations should seek to empower themselves to be more competitive vis-à-vis an increasingly demanding general audience.

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Ngwa Bertrand

26.Mar.2015

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