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CAMRAIL has frowned at some portions of the Yang commission report on the Eseka train disaster, released by the Secretary General at the Presidency. While accepting that over speeding was the main cause of the tragedy, the company is however contesting claims from the findings that the locomotives were defective and is declining that responsibility on grounds the machines were new.

The company reveals that the wagons were purchased in 2014 through an international call to tender and argues that the wagons could not have been in good condition, though preliminary findings showed they were in good state before purchase. The company from which the wagons were bought has to bear responsibility for furnishing equipments in a possible doubtful state, CAMRAIL officials claim.

The company however assures families who were affected by the catastrophe that measures are being taken to ensure they are paid compensation and that it will cooperate with judicial authorities to see to it that those who are found to have a hand directly or indirectly in the disaster face the law

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Rita Akana

26.May.2017

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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. 

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Abeh Valery

26.May.2017

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President Paul Biya has announced the reimbursement of 1billion FCFA as an additional assistance to compensate families that lost their members in the Eseka train accident and a monument constructed on the accident side in honor of over 100 people who perished on 21 October 2016. In a released signed by the Secretary-General at the presidency, Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh yesterday.

 

 According to reports the president’s release and building of monument have been criticized by deceased relatives. 

“Where was the president when we suffered our lost? The Government cannot come a day after 7 months wanting to assist us. I doubt if we will receive anything since it was the same thing the camrail did promised us and never fulfilled it. Few days after the accident, we were promised to be compensated the sum of 1.5 million CFA per family. This was to assist in the funeral expenses. Since then, we have not heard from Camrail”says a deceased family angrily.

 

After 7 months of research the result for the cause of the Eseka train accident is out.

 

The commission put in place to investigate the cause of the accident made public the results of the survey, after seven months of waiting. This commission put the blame on the transport company Cameroon Railways (camrail) for the cause of the accident. The company is accused of the non respect of security measures, high speed, overloading and bad states of the breaks systems.

 

Cameroon Railways (camrail), it officials, and all the persons found guilty by the investigators will be judged and sanctioned accordingly says the president’s release.

   

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Ndi Modeste

25.May.2017

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Authorities in Cameroon have shut down an Amnesty International press conference scheduled to take place in Yaoundé this morning, the organization said today.

Early this morning, around a dozen security agents, in uniform and plain clothes, entered the hotel and ordered the managers to close the press conference venue. No written administrative justification was provided for the prohibition, although a written order was presented banning another event with partners in the afternoon.

“The aim of the press conference was to present more than 310,000 letters and petitions signed from people all across the world, asking President Paul Biya to release three students imprisoned for 10 years simply for sharing a joke by SMS about Boko Haram,” said Alioune Tine, Amnesty International’s West and Central Africa Director.

A formal letter declaring the hosting of the press conference was handed to the Yaoundé 1 prefecture by Amnesty International’s partners on 19 May. The prefecture acknowledged receipt of the letter. On 22 May Amnesty International’s partners reminded prefecture about the press conference. While Cameroonian law requires a prior declaration informing the authorities of the organization of a public meeting, such a prohibition cannot be justified.

“These students have done nothing more than share a private joke, but their conviction and sentence could see them spend a decade behind bars and destroy their future prospects. We join more than 310,000 people across the world in calling on the authorities in Cameroon to release these students, allow them to re-join their families, and realise their dream of continuing their studies and finding a job,” said Alioune Tine.

Another event planned for this afternoon by one of Amnesty International’s local partners, to discuss the human rights situation in the country, was also prohibited.

In a written decision dated 23 May 2017, the prefect of the Yaounde 1 district held that “because of the threat of disruption of public order, the conference entitled “Human rights and the fight against terrorism in Cameroon”, scheduled from 2 pm to 6 pm, is prohibited from taking place”.

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Simon Ateba

25.May.2017

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More than 30 migrants, mostly toddlers, drowned on Wednesday when about 200 people without life jackets fell from a boat into the sea off the Libyan coast before they could be hauled into waiting rescue boats.

Rescue group MOAS, which operates in the Mediterranean, said its staff was pulling bodies out of the water. "Most are toddlers," co-founder Chris Catrambone said on Twitter.

A total of 34 dead bodies were found in the water, and around 1,800 people rescued from four rubber dinghies and six wooden boats, the coast guard said later in a statement.

British and Spanish navy ships, aid group Doctors Without Borders (MSF), three merchant ships and a tug boat joined MOAS and the Italian Coast Guard and Navy to carry out the rescues.

The ill-fated boat probably tipped because of a combination of weather conditions and the fact the migrants suddenly crowded to one side, sending just under half of the 500 on board into the water, the coast guard said.

More than 1,300 people have died this year on the world's most dangerous crossing for migrants, after boarding flimsy boats to flee poverty and war across Africa and the Middle East.

Last Friday, more than 150 disappeared at sea, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said Tuesday, citing testimony collected after survivors disembarked in Italy.

In the past week, more than 7,000 migrants have been plucked from boats in international waters off the western coast of Libya, where people smugglers operate with impunity.

Despite efforts by Italy and the European Union to train and equip the U.N.-backed government in Tripoli and its coast guard to fight traffickers, migrants are arriving in record numbers.

Disputes are also brewing between the Libyan Coast Guard and aid groups. MSF and SOS Mediteranee said officials from the Tripoli-based force had boarded a migrant boat during a rescue Tuesday, robbing the migrants and firing shots into the air.

More than 60 people fell into the water in the ensuing panic, but no one was injured as life jackets had already been given out, MSF and SOS Mediteranee said, broadly corroborating an earlier report by humanitarian group Jugend Rettet.

"Italian and European authorities should not be providing support to the Libyan Coast Guard," MSF representative Annemarie Loof said. "This support is further endangering people's lives."

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Rita Akana

25.May.2017

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The Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales, BHRC, has released a new report in which it revealed numerous violations of international law and fair trial protections in Cameroon’s ongoing prosecution of 28 people.
According to the report, Jodie Blackstock, BHRC’s observer who attended the hearings of Felix Agbor-Balla, Fontem Neba and Mancho Bibixy in April 2017 witnessed a number of serious breaches of the defendants’ fundamental rights to due process and a fair trial.
Going by the observers’ report, Cameroon’s use of the military tribunal despite the fact that charges listed did not fall under military law, violated the right to an independent and impartial trial.

The report also condemns the broadly-defined and imprecise charges, which do not specify which actions by the accused are considered to constitute criminal offences. Equally, the report stated that the lack of information to the accused, denied access to legal assistance and ongoing pre-trial detention since January 2017, with no decision made by the court on its lawfulness or the possibility of bail are all clear breach of fair trial rights.

Speaking on the observation made, Kirsty Brimelow, BHRC Chairperson said charging peaceful protesters breaches basic tenets of Cameroon’s international law obligations as well as its Constitution.
Going by the rights committee, if it transpires that laws designed for terrorist atrocities have been used to detain peaceful protesters, it is an abuse of those laws, and of the right to peaceful protest. To the group, denying detainees meaningful access to lawyers, or to the purported evidence supporting allegations against them, also breaches their legal rights and protections.

In the end, the BHRC urged Cameroon’s state prosecutor to urgently review the charges in these cases. “Due process and fair trial rights must be applied. Whilst charges are reviewed, all detainees should be released from custody or reasons for their detention examined and argued in full bail hearings.

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Rita Akana

25.May.2017

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