Disagreement: Senators grumble over salary

Senators in Cameroon are agitated that their emoluments have been decreased from 1 300 000 CFA francs to 800 000 CFA francs in order to match the pay of the MPs.

The decision taken at the end of April 2015 came as a shock to Senators who do not want to accept it.

The recent session held in June had a tensed atmosphere as Senators questioned the sudden change of the CDPM. While some expressed anger openly others were mute.

A petition was signed to rectify the issue according to sources. The Senators requested the President of CPDM, Marcel Niat Njifenji to explain to them the reason for the decrease in their salaries but he refused to grant them audience. He was therefore ignored throughout the meeting and his speech did not get a feedback from the Senators.

"At the end of the plenary session, he stopped to greet everyone. We stayed in the room for a while and he left when he got tired,” said a senator. The senators were absent at a buffet that was organized after the meeting last week. Some senators have also returned to their constituencies.

An explanation on the situation was given to support the Senators. According to several sources, the decision to cut the ‘wages’ of senators was approved by the Presidency of the Republic. "The Presidency of the Republic has asked that the senators' salary be the same as of MPs,” as informed by the General Secretariat of the Senate. No official explanation has yet been given.

Michel Meva'a Eboutou, General Secretary of the Senate was identified as the cause of the problem. He fixed the payments of senators in 2013 without the consent of his colleagues. He is also the Senate fund manager and is at the moment in the bad books of his colleagues. Comments that often graze insult uttered by some senators are against him.

Peter Manfany Musonge, the President of the CPDM parliamentary group, held an emergency meeting yet nothing has been solved yet. Meanwhile, others triggered a legal debate. According to their theory, the Senate is an independent body which is capable of determining the remuneration of its members independently. To them, this is an intolerable interference of the executive in the legislature.

Others, however, resented the inconsistency of the approach. "How is it that salaries were being asked to be cut down while the Senate budget remains unchanged at 15 billion, 200 million FCFA?” asked an SDF senator.

Some sources also accuse the National Assembly to have provided a longstanding salary scale. But the problems between the Senate and the National Assembly are actually profound. The misunderstanding is based on the allowances that cover fuel and communication costs given to MPs and Senators.

According to the senators, MPs should not be given the same privileges as them because they are few (100) in number as compared to the 180 MPs. Nonetheless, these complaints have been persistent in this institution since it was created in 2013.