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Cameroon |
DEVELOPMENT
Despite progress already made, there’s still a long way to go
In spite of important improvements made by the Government in education, health care, housing conditions and other social services which the majority of the poor underprivileged classes have access to, poverty remains endemic and differences in income excessive. Because of economic liberalisation and financial cuts, it’s proved difficult to improve the living conditions of the poor and give them better hope for the future. Furthermore, AIDS is advancing at an alarming pace.
Disparities
The name, «New-Bell», might conjure up images of a pleasant peaceful quarter in Douala. In fact, it’s nothing more than a ramshackle shanty-town, built up over the years with wood and discarded corrugated iron sheets. Since 1990, Cameroon’s political history has known some eventful periods which gave rise to great hopes for change and social reform. However, among New-Bell’s 360,000 inhabitants, some are beginning to think that the Government will never improve their living conditions. The shacks they live in are minute, separated from each other by very narrow passages intersected with water channels. Electricity cuts are very frequent and there are only a few water pumps. Perhaps because the community is organised and administered by members of the Social Democratic Front (SDF), their representatives have succeeded in persuading the municipality to install toilets on the edge of their district. According to Paul Djomo, a forty-year-old local: «All the inhabitants of the district are out of work. The little revenue they have, comes either from people’s old-age pensions, or from various businesses carried out by street vendors; or from stolen cars resold as spare parts.»
The inhabitants of the more upper-class areas are mainly the well-to-do. The posh areas of Bastos in Yaounde or of Bonanjo in Douala are the exact opposite of New-Bell: Huge spacious houses, wooded parks, shopping malls, businesses, etc. These rich inhabitants are protected by walls, electric fencing and security systems controlling the area.
While the law makes no difference between rich and poor, nonetheless, many inequalities remain. Even if the gap between the rich and the poor have diminished slightly with the introduction of certain aspects of the National Programme for the Struggle Against Poverty (PNLP), nonetheless, there’s vast disparities in incomes. Alongside signs of obvious wealth, seventy-five percent of Cameroonians live below the poverty line — a breeding ground for bitterness and frustration. There are fewer political crimes than five years ago; but other forms of crime are increasing e.g. hold-ups, robberies, muggings and the like. Reasons given for these types of crime vary from the high level of poverty, unemployment (8.4% of the active population are unemployed [1996 survey]), and the relative ease with which arms can be obtained on the black market.
The authorities reckon that the very little progress made in the fight against crime, can be explained by the enormity of the problems which have arisen from the economic crisis which hit the country between 1987 and 1997, and from rampant unemployment. To this must be added new problems, the most alarming being the rapid advance of AIDS which has gone from 0.2% in 1987 to 11% in 2001.
Moukouri Manga Bell, a SDF Member of Parliament, puts it this way: «In these circumstances, we will need decades to find solutions to most of these problems. The October 1997 presidential election brought with it a wave of enthusiasm and what people took to be “democracy”. Plus the fact that the Cameroon Democratic Rally Union (RDPC) leaders unwittingly complicated the situation by making promises, which subsequently, they simply couldn’t keep. There’s no longer any enthusiasm among the ordinary citizens, evidenced by the minimal excitement of Cameroonians over registering for the electoral lists in 2001. Some simply didn’t feel any benefit from President Biya’s re-election in 1997, in spite of the fact that he’d declared the struggle against poverty to be the priority item in his election campaign.»
While recognising the effects of the crisis, certain «detractors» claim that the persisting poverty and unemployment are caused by other more current factors. The National Union for Democracy and Progress (UNDP) is Cameroon’s third political party and has some of its members in the government. (The UNDP comes after the RDPC and the SDF). The UNDP has criticised the government for favouring the liberalisation of markets and because of its financial cutbacks. Referring to the 2001-2002 budget, Celestin Bedzigui, the UNDP‘s vice-president, declares: «Society in general and in particular the working class and the poor are paying the price for conservative economic policies».
Reconstruction and development
When the PNLP was first launched, it was in an atmosphere of great hope. This eventually gave way to the present bitterness. In July 1998, the Government published its political agenda, and the PNLP included not only socio-economic programmes with the aim of putting right the inequalities in living conditions, but also institutional reform measures, educational and cultural programmes, income-generating enterprises and the development of human resources. Mr. Jean Ndoudoumou, the PNLP‘s co-ordinator described the plan of action as «an all-embracing process to change society completely, by improving everyone’s living conditions».
In the beginning, the PNLP fulfilled a double function: Determining how aid received from donor nations and organisations was to be used; and drawing up the annual national budget. The way in which public funds were used, thus changed considerably. The defence budget was reduced and funds for education, health, housing and other social expenditure were considerably increased. At the same time, the PNLP guaranteed a special fund (several billion CFA francs), which was used for financing projects such as National Vaccination Campaigns, installing electricity in rural areas, and generating employment for out-of-work young people. Although the PNLP‘s importance has diminished nationally, it has continue to monitor what is taking place.
Change of gear
In its budget for the 2001-2002 financial year, the government began to introduce notable changes in its general economic policies, which, according to the UNDP and others, ran counter to the PNLP‘s long-term objectives. With only a few months until the local and parliamentary elections (the former put off twice!), the RDPC resigned itself to speeding up the privatisation programme and giving up any hope of controlling foreign investments.
At present, the government has adopted a new macro-economic policy called «Growth, Employment and Redistribution.» The aim of this policy is to set up a «rapidly growing competitive economy,» by adopting a strict fiscal and monetary discipline, by increasing considerably foreign and national investments, by increasingly opening up the economy to international competition, and by redefining priority public expenditure. The World Bank and the IMF have approved this approach.
To those who reproach the government for having given up on its social priorities in order to adopt conventional macro-economic methods, Mr. Dieudonne Oyono who is in charge of policy in the PNLP, holds that this latter approach is an important element in government policy. He explains: «The PNLP has no objections to a growth strategy. The two approaches cannot function one without the other. The strategic growth plan stipulates that income and opportunities must be redistributed in favour of the poor. But to achieve this, there must be a clear increase in availability of jobs and in higher incomes.
The poverty trap
In a budgetary analysis published in July 2001, at the same time as the 2001-2002 budget, the Minister for the Economy and Finances grappled frankly with the on-going problem of the poor. He stated: «Cameroon is still one of the countries of the world with the worst record of social inequalities; 40% of families still live below the minimum subsistence level.» According to the most recent data published in a report: «Poverty in Cameroon», by the United Nations Programme for Development (PNUD) in July 2001, it has been established that 61% of Cameroonians live below the poverty line. We are mostly concerned with people living in the rural areas and the inhabitants of the poor districts in the major towns, where more than half seem to be «caught up in the poverty trap» and live on a monthly revenue of less than 25,000 CFA francs (38 euros).
Furthermore, inequalities between the sexes have also not disappeared. According to the Report on Social Development in Cameroon in 1998, 60.2% of adult women are poor, while for men it is 48.7%. Some observers wonder if this situation is not partly due to the government’s liberalisation programme. An official of Women Stand Up (an NGO working in rural areas), says: «The recovery plan has me worried. On the one hand, we have to be sure of our economic survival. We’ve got to organise a sound economic policy. We’ve got to be able to sell our goods,» she observed during a recent press interview. «On the other hand, it seems that this only makes the rich, richer.» Practically, the situation of the poor doesn’t change — it even worsens.
Unemployment and «work flexibility»
The lack of stable jobs is the main problem which the inhabitants of New-Bell and other urban areas come face to face with. Between 1990 and 2000, it is estimated that around 180,000 jobs were done away with. According to government calculations, during the 1990s, an average of 50% of the active population was unable to find employment in the organised sector; manufacturing was hit hard by unemployment. At the present time, this reduction in manpower is being compensated for by the creation of new jobs. Some of these jobs are of «a very high quality», says a senior official in the Ministry of Employment and Social Security: Salaries are quite acceptable and the level of qualification remains average. Apart from salaries which remain fairly low in some sectors, during the past few years, employment has been one of the main demands of the unions, and the reason for more and more frequent strikes.
Some government leaders consider also that the present regulations are too rigid. The Recovery Plan recommends «a greater flexibility in the employment market.» Trade unionists fear that the implementation of this plan will show itself in the public sector with the suppression of many jobs, notably when big companies are privatised. From this, we have never-ending claims linked to an increase in the salaries. Other groups, such as the Cameroonian Workers Union (USTC), have formulated recommendations of another kind aiming at setting up a «social salary». According to a USTC report, not only would such a salary enable the poor to provide for their basic needs, but also it would equally improve the prospect of stability in Cameroon through setting up «a central mechanism allowing the maintenance of social cohesion during the consolidation of democracy and when faced with the risks of globalisation.»
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