The coronavirus outbreak in Cameroon, with over 655 confirmed infections, has accelerated a government plan to remove thousands of homeless children from the streets.  About 3,000 street children are to be reunited with their families or receive job training, including orphans and asylum-seekers from the neighboring Central African Republic.

Henri Nyambi Dikosso, director of national solidarity at Cameroon Ministry of Social Affairs is leading a group of social workers and hospital staff removing hundreds of children from streets in the capital Yaoundé this Monday morning. Dikosso says they are making sure they screen against COVID-19, which has been spreading in the central African state.

He says they are taking body temperatures so that the Ministry of Health, which is their partner in the operation to clear children from the streets, can start taking care of suspected COVID-19 cases. He says they are also making sure that street corners where the children lived are disinfected and the children are washed to stop the risk of infections.

Safia Djamila, 17, is among the children who have agreed to leave the streets. She says she has been on her own for three years, living on donations from well-wishers and on leftover food from restaurants. Djamila says she escaped from their family home in the northern town of Mokollo when she lost her mother, and her father brought in another wife who molested her and refused to send her to school.

She says she is leaving the streets because she wants to learn how to cook, sew dresses and do embroidery. She says her dream is to raise money to attend literacy classes so she can read and write. 

Ten years ago, Cameroon said it had counted a thousand street children with ages from 4 years to 17 years in the towns of Yaoundé and Douala. The figures increased to over 10,000 when the separatist crisis broke out in the country’s English speaking north west and south west regions, and Boko Haram terrorism intensified on Cameroons northern border with Nigeria.

Many asylum seekers also came from the troubled Central African Republic.

Cameroon had plans to clear at least 3,000 children from the streets before the end of this year, but the spread of COVID-19, confirmed in 655 of its citizens in about a month, has forced officials to begin removing them from the streets earlier than planned.

Marie-Therese Abena Ondoua, Cameroon minister of Women’s Empowerment and the Family says parents in particular and communities in general should save the lives of the children by clearing them off the streets.

She says they are asking parents who want their children back home to assume their responsibilities by assuring that there is family stability and rigor. She says the government will be giving either education or job training to orphans, asylum seekers and those who refuse to be reunited with their families. Ondoua said high levels of poverty, conflict, family disunity and a high rate of divorce, illiteracy, rural exodus and early marriage were responsible for the increasing number of street children.

Source: VOA

Cameroon’s aged president is coming under fire for his absence from the national stage as the central African country faces a burgeoning coronavirus crisis.

A month after the first case of COVID-19 was recorded, 87-year-old Paul Biya has yet to address the nation — a silence that for supporters is a sign of gravitas but for critics one of failure.

According to official figures posted early Monday, Cameroon has 658 cases of the virus, with nine deaths, making it the second most-affected country after South Africa in sub-Saharan Africa.

Cameroon is already waging two violent conflicts, one against Boko Haram jihadists in the north, the other against English-speaking separatists in the west.

The fighters in the new front are doctors and nurses who are woefully lacking in masks and breathing equipment.

In his 37 years in power, Cameroonians have become accustomed to Biya’s long absences, mainly because of poor health, but his silence over the pandemic is raising sharp questions.

He posed for the cameras after talks with the US ambassador on March 11, but did not speak to the press.

Six days later Biya urged Cameroonians on Facebook to “respect” measures taken to combat the virus, but since then there has not been so much as a whisper from a leader who has overseen many crises since he took power in 1982.

– Biya ‘cannot be pinned down’ –

Biya’s track record suggests he is not a major communicator in the best of times, making just three or four appearances a year. But for researcher Stephane Akoa, “In a context like this, the presidential message is important.”

Last week, speculation mounted on social media that Biya could be dead, prompting a formal public denial by Communications Minister Rene-Emmanuel Sadi, who insisted that Biya was “going about his official business as normal”.

But there was no word from the president himself, provoking a sharp attack from main opposition leader Maurice Kamto, the runner-up to Biya in 2018 elections.

On Friday, Kamto demanded that the president address the nation within seven days, otherwise “the people… will inevitably see his failure”.

Biya’s silence “is becoming criminal,” he added.

Labour Minister Gregoire Owona snapped back, saying Kamto wished to politicise the crisis, calling it “shameful”.

Oswald Baboke, the president’s deputy chief of staff, commended Biya’s “wisdom… (and) restraint,” writing in the press that “the President’s Time cannot be improvised and cannot be pinned down.”

Thus far the youthful health minister, Malachie Manaouda, has been the point man for the coronavirus crisis, tweeting out frequent updates and detailing the government’s response.

But criticism has grown louder with the rise in known cases from 142 to 658 in a week.

– ‘Lack of coordination’ –

“Government communication is weak, its response was late and in some respects poorly prepared,” said Stephane M’Bafou, a consultant in public management and governance.

“There is an obvious lack of coordination,” said economist Albert Ze.

Prime Minister Joseph Dion Ngute on March 13 announced measures such as closing borders and a ban on rallies, which have been extended.

The one new step since then, attributed to Biya but announced by Ngute, has been the creation of a solidarity fund worth one billion CFA francs (1.5 million euros / $1.65 million).

Others say the response does not go nearly far enough.

“We must quickly declare a curfew, isolate the cities where cases are confirmed and move towards a general containment regardless of the socio-economic cost,” said M’Bafou.

Source: AFP

Seven people were killed when two suicide bombers, suspected to be members of Nigeria’s Boko Haram militant group, attacked a village in northern Cameroon on Sunday, police and a local official said.

“Two Boko Haram bombers blew themselves up at around 8p.m.” in the attack on Amchide, on the border with Nigeria, a policeman said Monday, while a local official said a village chief and two teenagers were among the dead.

The attack took place as the villagers were “returning home” though a zone that the authorities have said is dangerous after 6p.m., the official said.

Amchide is a small trading village in Cameroon’s Far North province, a tongue of land that lies between Chad to the east and Nigeria to the west.

The province has been hit since 2014 by Boko Haram fighters making incursions from northeast Nigeria.

The militants’ campaign has killed more than 27,000 people since 2009, several thousand of them in Cameroon, and displaced more than two million, sparking a dire humanitarian crisis in the Lake Chad region.

According to Amnesty International, at least 275 people were killed in the Far North last year.

Source: AFP

Cameroon has turned a football stadium in the country into an accommodation centre for coronavirus patients as authorities grapple with lack of space to lodge and treat the growing number of people testing positive for the virus.

Minister of Public Health, Dr Manaouda Malachie, said on Saturday that the Yaounde military stadium will now serve as one of the large capacity centres in the capital expected to increase the country’s management capacity to more than 3,000 beds.

He had earlier accompanied the Secretary General of the Cameroon Presidency, Mr Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh, for an inspection of the stadium.

Authorities are also using some newly constructed social housing apartments in the country as accommodation centres.

Confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the Central African country have hit 650 as it recorded nine deaths and 17 recoveries.

The country was the fifth on the continent with the highest number of confirmed cases after South Africa, Algeria, Egypt and Morocco as at Saturday.

Source: Daily Nation