(Business in Cameroon) - In late May 2021, in Yaoundé, an awareness, discussion, and training workshop were organized to discuss the problems encountered concerning the processing of civil servants’ salaries. During the workshop, the various parties involved in the chain pointed out some problems including identity theft.
“The Ministry of Finance [MINFI] is confronted with identity theft committed by unscrupulous profiteers who falsify documents like clearance or account closure certificates and divert salaries. Meanwhile, agents working for the ministry tasked to process salaries are unable to detect fake identities. Another problem is that salaries and pensions are paid into accounts of deceased servants,” the MINFI indicates.
“All these problems are of concern to every one of us and proper solutions need to be formulated to improve the win-win partnership between the MINFI and credit institutions for civil servants’ greatest satisfaction,” said Cyrill Edou Alo’o, Director general of the Budget, in his opening speech.
During the workshop, Gilbert Didier Edoa, general secretary of the MINFI, revealed that an audit instructed to evaluate the losses sustained by public treasury due to open deceased servants’ accounts estimated the losses at XAF21.8 billion. To date, the public treasury has recovered XAF12 billion out of those funds, added Robert Simo Kengne, head of the salaries and pensions department at the Ministry of Finance.
Still during the workshop, credit institutions expressed concerns over the servants that unexpectedly stop domiciling their salaries in accounts opened at banks they owe and start domiciling those salaries at new banks without even clearance or account closure certificates. According to the representatives of the various banks present at the workshop, this situation causes losses for the local banking sector.
Let’s note that for the time being, there is no information about the solutions formulated for the problems pointed out during the workshop.
Sylvain Andzongo