(Business in Cameroon) - Following a board meeting held on March 12, 2014 in Yaoundé, the Cameroonian polytechnic engineer, Bernard Bayiha, formerly the top technical advisor at the National Hydrocarbon Company (SNH), was appointed to the post of Managing Director of Chantier naval et industriel du Cameroun (CNIC). His deputy will be Roland Maxime Aka'a Ndi'i, who previously worked as services inspector at the Ministry of Economy, replacing Antoine Bikoro’o Alo’o as deputy director. According to company sources, both will assume their new posts on March 14.

A graduate of the Ecole nationale supérieure polytechnique de Yaoundé (class of ‘82), Bernard Bayiha will inherit a company in turmoil following his predecessor being found guilty of embezzlement. With overall sales amounting to 12 billion compared to 40 billion a decade ago, CNIC’s difficulties involve cash flow problems that have led to strikes throughout 2013 by employees demanding the payment of outstanding wages.

But Mr Bayiha’s arrival at the helm of the CNIC puts an end to the technical support that was being provided to the organisation. In the end, the partnership proved hardly fruitful, only contributing to more tension at home. Indeed, Mr Bayiha will be replacing Korean, Seoung Rok Yang, as Managing Director – a position to which the latter was first appointed in April 2012, later assuming leadership of the public sector industrial company on October 2, 2012. He resigned after several mood swings that shaped his tenure at the helm of the shipyard company.

Deemed incompetent by some of his closest colleagues, Seoung Rok Yang had landed in the position of CNIC head following the sacking of his countryman, Moon Kwi-ho, who had paid a heavy price for strategic errors made with the company’s board chairman, Louis Claude Nyassa. Reliable sources have revealed that the Korean was fighting to have Yard pétrolier de Limbé, a strategic post being built by CNIC, focus on the shipyard construction project while the board preferred to prioritise shipyard repair on the west-African coast.