(Business in Cameroon) - Created in 2001 with an exclusive contract for maintaining Cameroonian railway, the era when Société internationale des travaux ferroviaires (Sitrafer) made 2 billion FCfa in annual sales is long gone. Well-positioned and possessing solid expertise in Cameroon, Sitrafer have even successfully won two contracts worth 6 billion FCfa to do maintenance work on Madagascan railway for four years.  

But for almost three years now, this success story has turned the page to a new chapter of repeated strikes by Strafer employees. This permanent malcontent, confesses the Director and General Manager, Jacques Bimaï, is due to the drastic reduction in Camrail contracts since the arrival of competitors on the railway maintenance market  which, for years, was a Sitrafer strong-hold.

The Sitrafer Director and General Manager also reveals that the company’s sales went from 2 billion FCfa on average at the start to 282 million FCfa today – a decline of 88%. This has slimmed down the workforce from 400 to 200 employees and also increased the number of back payments owed for wages which the government has had to pay.

According to internal sources at Sitrafer, at the bottom of the company’s difficulties is the Director and General Manager’s leadership.  For example, there was an annual budget of 100 million FCfa for his “marketing operations”. This poor management, state reliable sources, is behind the Cameroonian government’s decision, taken after a board meeting held on May 10, 2013, to separate from Sitrafer’s capital which was already at Société nationale d’investissements (Sni).

Bad governance or payback?

Mr Bimaï has flat-out denied the allegations of poor management,  as he believes that Sitrafer’s struggles are really due to the Bolloré group, parent company of Camrail, which he alleged decided to make the Director/General Manager pay for his attempt to review the concession contract between the government and Camrail to get the Cameroonian government to grant a clear division between the railway’s sales, which would firmly remain in the domain of the Bolloré group and the maintenance of the railay network which should also contractually be given to another partner, preferably a national one, like Sitrafer.

Supporters of this point of view believe that this is why then Minister of Finance, Essimi Menyé, in an effort to strengthen Sitrafer’s position in the Cameroonian railway sector, had acquired in June 2010 25% additional shares (4,165 to be exact) in Sitrafer’s capital for 83.3 million FCfa in order to bring the State’s participation in the private company to 40%.

The manoeuvre did not rescue the company from the abyss after the better years of 2001-2010 when Sitrafer paid “over 6 billion FCfa in salaries, 2 billion FCfa in income taxes to the Treasury, over 600 million FCfa in social security deductions to the CNPS and made close to 3 billion in investments,” listed Jacques Bimaï, who openly accuses Camrail of orchestrating the arrival of competitors on the rail maintenance market “to break Sitrafer”.