Workers of the Société International des Travaux Ferroviaires (SITRAFER), a subcontracting company for the Cameroon Railway Company (CAMRAIL), have gone on strike anew. The protest action which started on Monday July 16, they say, is a desperate move to showcase discontentment over seven months of unpaid salaries, spanning October 2011 and July 2012.
Most of the 400 aggrieved workers who staged the sit-in at the train station in the Bassa neighbourhood of Douala, laid claims to accrued salaries totalling FCFA 350 million. For them, the amount should have been paid by July 11, 2012 if resolutions agreed upon at a July 6 crisis meeting between officials of SITRAFER, CAMRAIL and the National Trade Union of Railway Maintenance Workers (SYNATRAMFER) anchored by the Ministers of Transport and Labour and Social Security in Yaounde, were respected. “Shattered hopes and disgruntlements following our inability as breadwinners to maintain daily contributions to the family pantry all this while have compelled us to resort to this social strategy to amplify our cries,” they could be heard saying.
Barely five days after the set date was over, the fuming workers stopped activities of the railway company and hindered movements of trains. Although the railway company continued to register passengers under the watchful eyes of public security forces, the discontented SITRAFER workers marched along the railway and crowded the outside portions of the front and aft of trains that were ready to move.
The National President of the SYNATRAMFER, Melingui Vincent, called on SITRAFER to behave as it needs the workforce for production. “The crux of the matter is how we can maintain the upkeep and basic needs of our families.” He explained, adding that they will be there until a comprehensive solution is reached.
On its part, CAMRAIL officials, in a release on Monday, disclosed that CAMRAIL is not in any way connected to the strike. “Since the start of 2012, we have paid in FCFA 700 million to SITRAFER as we ought to.” It states that the strike is a failed responsibility of SITRAFER and urged it to comply with the resolutions taken in Yaounde recently.
