CICAM workers at the gates of unemployment?
Some 300 workers of cameroon’s textile production company CICAM Garoua branch, have expressed fear of becoming jobless as the company branch in the North region of Cameroon suffers a second halt in production during this month of July.
On July 2nd 2022, there was a shutdown as aresult of fuel shortage but work resumed few days after. Another stop was reported on July 7 and nothing has filtered since then. The General Manager, Eduard Ebah Abada has issued a correspondence to competent authorities to see into the constant fuel shortage faced in the industry and has reassured workers work will continue as from July 19th 2022. Words which the workers say they cannot be too sure of : “This has been the case since last year. There is a shutdown and they try to calm tension but nothing is changing”
This is not the first time the Garoua branch of CICAM is faced with such a situation. In 2021, they suffered a four-month shut down and only resumed work following a presidential order and some financial disbursement from its lone partner: the government.
The company incurred a F CFA 13.4 billion loss between 2018 and 2020 and unfortunately made only F CFA 7.3 billion as profit in 2020.
Over the years CICAM has not been able to satisfy local demand. In 2021, only 10% of the teachers’ day fabric was made available while in 2022, women were encouraged to use their old fabrics to celebrate the international women’s Day.
