Cameroonians celebrate international day for the old

Cameroonians join the international community today for yet, another international day; this time devoted to the old.

For many Cameroonians, this is one opportunity to laugh, not just at the announcement of another such day as they experience virtually on a daily basis without any real effect, but also because age is a veritable cause for concern, especially as this category of citizens is all too often ridiculed either through the quality and intentions of public policies or simply by the public perception of older Cameroonians.

Normally, the situation was expected to be quite different, especially when one considers the consideration African traditions reserve for the old. Apparently, incursions of modern tradition have taken a deadly toll on this attitude, once admired by the Western civilization. Come to think of it!

Ordinary Cameroonians approach retirement with understandable fright. Although there are no available statistics, many civil servants, especially of the so-called sovereignty professions such as Command personnel (Governors, SDOs, Dos or Police) or Armed forces personnel of the higher rungs as well as personnel of the in-land revenue sector such as Public treasurers, Tax collectors or Customs officers usually die within a few years of their being admitted into retirement.

One can easily understand that the curtailing of huge salary bonuses or other emoluments can lead to a situation that plunges many into new forms of diseases, especially cardio-vascular diseases and their attendant lethal outcomes.

There is no gainsaying that the Cameroonian civil service literally abandons even its most active civil servants once they proceed on annual leave. A few examples: in active working life, a civil servant may be exempt from paying full-scale medical bills, for which in some cases, they may pay for as little as 30 percent in state medical or medical investigation facilities.

Such facilities are usually phased out with retirement and the situation is even further worsened by the fact that the retiree’s income is not even as much as when he was in active service. In some other cases, the calculation to establish retirement benefits hardly takes into account the real market situation and the purchasing power as pegged on what the retiree effectively earns.

For example, no employee of the civil service contract category or all workers of the private sector can earn more than FCFA 150 000 in monthly retirement emoluments; this regardless of what the retiree earned during his normal working career! This means even if you earned FCFA 5 Million a month for a period of, say, ten year uninterruptedly, , the highest you can expect at retirement is no more than FCFA 150 000!

Recent statistics from the National Institute of Statistics show trends that indicate a growing population of the aged in Cameroon; to the extent that in the next 20 years the management of the older segment of the population should really be a problem.

The civil service decision of sending too many people on retirement as a means of opening up job opportunities for the younger segments of the population could, in this middle term, prove counter-effective, especially as those being thrown into retirement are often still strong enough to remain productive, even when enjoying their retirement benefits.

But these long-term considerations which favour retirees should not hide the fact that current policies are not favourable to the old. The aged in Cameroon are still largely neglected and there is need for affirmative government policies to make these people, who were the pride of the nation in the past, enjoy a deserved rest.

It is about improving their material and living conditions. But it is also about providing amenities which improve the quality of their lives and also about reassuring them that the nation remains immensely grateful to them for their contribution to its progress.