Cameroon: South West Governor, Buea Mayor split over striking council workers

The Governor of the South West Region, Bernard Okalia Bilai and the Mayor of Buea council, Ekema Patrick Esunge, are at loggerheads over the fate of some striking Buea council workers.

The disenchanted council workers who embarked on a hunger strike on Thursday, May 18 over what they termed Mayor Ekema Patrick’s intransigence, but were forced to called-off the strike action on May 19, after Governor Okalia Bilai pleaded with them not to sabotage the National Day festivities.

After the National Day celebrations, the workers, on Tuesday, May 23, marched to the Governor’s Office and besieged the office, promising to resume their hunger strike action. But Governor Okalia Bilai exhorted them to retire to their various houses that he was going to resolve the matter with the Mayor. 

According to reports, after the disillusioned staff of the council vacated the Governor’s Office premises, the administrator is said to have called the municipal authority to look into the workers’ plights, but the Mayor was categorical that he does know the striking workers.

According to him, the said council workers are just a group of disgruntle individuals who are struggling to sabotage the council.

It will be recalled that the workers are demanding for the payment of their accumulated salaries, spanning from 17 to 22 months.

According to them, the Mayor treats them with scorn and denigrates them even in front of their wives, husbands and children.

The Council staff said the Mayor has refused to tell them why he has suspended their salaries. “We have written several letters to the Mayor and he has never replied any of the letters.

When we write to him, he doesn’t receive. When you go to his office, he doesn’t receive you no matter how long you stay there. It is as a result of this that we had to be writing through the Post Office so that the letter would come directly to him, and when he sees them, he sends them back to us,” the spokesperson of  the group, Monono Hans, told Cameroon Concord.

Other workers like Charles Moki Toni, Martin Njie Evakise and Elizabeth Ngowo Mbua, are all going through this ordeal.