(Business in Cameroon) - Some of the 3,000 employees of Société des plantations de Mbanga (SPM), an agro-industrial factory which produces the banana dessert in the Moungo department, Littoral region, protested on September 4, 2014 before the offices of the Directorate General of the company in Douala, the capital of Cameroon. The workers are demanding the payment of 15 months of back pay, according to Quotidien de l’Economie.

Indeed, for the last 9 months, the agro-industrial company has been virtually at a standstill, only the administrative personnel continue to work two or three days per week, stated internal sources of the company. This is due to the cash flow tensions that the company has been experiencing for at least two years, difficulties have finally led to a halt in production and banana exports.

The agro-industrial company has been very criticised by civil society, the people and local elites such as the late Lapiro from Mbanga, renowned artist, who was imprisoned officially for participating in the pillaging of the SPM in February 2008 (he always considered this case to be the settling of a score orchestrated by the SPM). The company is generally accused of exploitation and especially for not paying its taxes thanks to certain privileges with some local authorities.

These accusations have been picked-up and amplified by Paul Eric Kingué, former mayor of Njombe-Penja, (localities in which SPM also has banana plantations) currently incarcerated for misuse of public funds and always saw the hand of the SPM behind its legal woes. “All the societies which produce bananas in the localities of Njombe-Penja make 100 billion FCFA in sales per annum and employees between 8,000 and 10,000 persons whose salaries do not pass 200 million FCFA per annum,” he has decried in numerous open letters written from his prison cell.

After these claims and a documentary broadcast last year by France 2 on the slave working conditions on Moungo banana plantations, a head of the France-Cameroon Chamber of Commerce had announced at its last RSE meeting held by the Competitiveness Committee in Yaoundé, that the SPM bananas had been boycotted on the Rungis market in France which is one of the major fruit markets in Europe. However, this information has not been confirmed by the Rungis press relations officer, contacted in its time by Ecofin Agency.