Chiefs beg Biya for salary increase

The President of the Buea sub-divisional Chiefs’ Conference, His Royal Majesty Johnson Njoke Njombe has pleaded with the Head of State to consider increasing the salaries he accorded them about two years ago.

It would be recalled that gazzetted traditional rulers in Cameroon, be they Chiefs, Fons, Sultans, Lamidos, Aldos or Sarkis, were not salaried until September 2013 when President Paul Biya signed a presidential fiat granting such. The decree accorded a monthly package of FCFA 200,000 for first class traditional rulers, FCFA 100,000 for those of the second class and FCFA 50,000 for third class ones. More than a third of Buea Chiefs are third class.

The decree followed several years of lobbying from the traditional rulers who predicated their request on the ‘important and demanding’ role they play in supporting state administration.

But two years on since their wish was granted, some Chiefs in Fako now think they wouldn’t be asking for too much by urging the President of the Republic to moot about a possible increase of the pay package.

““…Let me sincerely thank the Head of State for the decision to pay us salaries…. It was very unjust that the Chiefs had nothing from the state because it’s not easy to move around to solve problems of our chiefdoms and preserve our cultural heritage. We thank him sincerely…but like Oliver twist, we are asking him to try to modify the amount…” said Chief Njombe after chairing an Executive meeting of the Buea Chiefs’ Conference last Friday.

The meeting, we learnt, was to evaluate the outcome of a tour of chiefdoms that the newly elected BueaChiefs’ President (chief Njombe) embarked on recently. He said this of the tour: “…When I was elected president of the Buea Chiefs’ Conference, I promised to make a tour of all the chiefdoms so that I get information on how to better work. It was a wonderful tour and I discovered many things…the first problem is the constitution. The Chiefs Conference has been running for all these decades without a constitution, that’s why we have not been doing things in a uniform manner. So I have put in place a Constitutional Committee that will propose a Constitution to the Conference…”

The proposed Constitution, we gathered, will be adopted on 31 January in a General Assembly of the Buea Chiefs’ Conference.