Cameroon: driving school promoters announce strike
By Stephen TADAHA with additional information from Ecomatin
Some trade unions and promoters of driving schools in Cameroon have announced a strike action starting on Thursday November 9, 2023.
This is the substance of a release jointly signed by some heads of driving schools and some driving school promoters in Cameroon in which they express their grievances, threatening to boycott the December session of driving license exams in Cameroon.
In the release, the promoters and driving school teachers, who say they’ve exhausted “all peaceful means” are demanding among other issues,
- a new driving license exam calender for the year 2024, with 12 sessions throughout the year instead of 4,
- a total and full stoppage of driving license exam sessions in Cameroon,
- the non intrusion of strangers as jury members in exam sessions,
- the non-distribution of driver’s licenses to persons who have niether undergone theoretical nor practical tests.
The stakeholders are threatening not to register candidates for the December 2023 exam session if solutions to these problems are not found.
This strike action if undertaken, might further dampen the image of the country’s driving system which has for the past years been pointed as one of the main reasons why so many road accidents keep occuring.
According to a report made public in 2021 by the ministry of transport, 7,200 deaths were registered in over 21,000 road accidents from 2011 to 2017, of which 10,5% were were caused by the non-mastery of driving lessons. Also, in the National Anti Corruption Commission’s (CONAC) two recent reports, complaints linked to driving schools and concerning the delivery of falsified driver’s licenses and corruptions in drivers license exams have been recurrent.
