Teachers to go on strike over unpaid GCE allowances

Teachers who marked the General Certificate of Education, GCE Examination say they would begin the new school year with a nationwide strike if the GCE Board does not pay their outstation allowances.

The Executive Secretary of the Cameroon Teachers Trade Union, CATTU, Wilfred Tasang, made the revelation to The Post in Yaounde over the weekend.

“It is a terrible thing that the outstation allowances of teachers who marked the GCE have not been paid. I hear some Government officials are blocking the money and wondering why outstation allowances should be paid to teachers; arguing that, by marking the GCE, they did just their normal job.

“I hear the Minister of Secondary Education ordered that the money be disbursed, but some people are sitting on it. If the money is not paid, they will start the new school year with a nationwide strike” Tasang said.

While attempting an evaluation, the CATTU Scribe said “the 2014 GCE results were catastrophic, especially the Ordinary Level, (O/L)”. He said the results were replete with errors. He regretted that the results were released without O/L Physics.

According to him: “Candidates were told they will have detail results when the slips come out. But, when the slips came out, they were full of technical errors. They were steps with complicating results. Some candidates had two subjects with different results”.

Tasang cited the case of one candidate with two slips, the same results and different numbers. One of the slips of the candidate had number 033300 and the other one carried number 033306.

Said he: “There is a candidate who went in for seven papers and finally passed in nine papers. I think that such errors are due to the incompetence of the Deputy Registrar in charge of Technical Services at the GCE Board, and the fact that markers were made to work under pressure and the results released under pressure.

He said the GCE Board has a machine, an Optical Mark Reader, which works under a certain level of humidity. This machine, he said, worked very well in Bamenda. “But we were surprised that the Deputy Registrar transferred the machine to Buea which does not have the climatic condition to enable it work. Tasang said the errors that bedeviled the 2014 GCE results reflect how bad things have become at the Board.

“The same staff strength at the GCE Board that used to manage the GCE of 25.000 candidates is the same that is expected to successfully manage the GCE of 164.000 candidates and release results on time,” he remaeked. But the Registrar of the Cameroon GCE Board, Humphrey Monono Ekema, has attributed the errors to old machines, lack of adequate personnel and power failure. He made the remarks at the Government Technical High School evaluation meeting in Yaounde during an evaluation meeting of the Ministries of Secondary and Basic Education.

CATTU Condemns Examiners’ Suspension During the meeting that took place on August 21, CATTU took exception to the controversial suspension of some GCE examiners recently. The Union wonders how three examiners, Gideon Muluh, Maurice Werewum Mbah and Thaddeus Bangu Mbah, could have been suspended for three years for the simple reason that they helped the SDF Chairman, Ni John Fru Ndi, to invite markers to his residence in Bamenda. They wondered if winning and dinning with Fru Ndi has become a crime at the GCE board.

“CATTU demands that their suspension be lifted immediately otherwise, the Board will be guilty of politicising examinations. To the best of our knowledge, no Government Minister has been suspended for visiting and dinning with Chairman Fru Ndi. If doing so were wrong, then, the GCE Board Chair, Prof. Peter Abety, should be suspended because he has dined with Fru Ndi several times,” further reads the CATTU report.

The report equally accuses the Deputy Registrar in Charge of Technical Services of “openly announcing his hatred for Cameroonians of the Northwest Region origin and incompetence.”

The CATTU document equally reads as follows: “It should be noted that the lapses noted in this year’s GCE emanate largely from the Technical Department which he controls.

Such personnel cannot be trusted with the handling of delicate national assignments like examinations. His replacement would be welcome”.