By Loveline Mbori
The proliferation of Common Initiative Groups, CIGs, and Non-governmental Organisations, NGOs, in Cameroon and Bamenda in particular, claiming to fight for the rights of the underprivileged.
Hardly will a day go by without CRTV's most widely listened programme "Morning Safari", having guests to talk about launching programmes here and there to this or that effect. Local radio station ding dung programmes on the air, while newspapers run columns with officials of these associations and organisations on captivating topics that seem interesting to those who would want to listen.
But it is widely believed that most of these associations and organisations operate from briefcases and do the widest publicity on the media about their objectives and competence.
They also hold workshops and seminars inviting the press, particularly those of the print media, so that they publish the stories that the organisers use "as report cards" to lobby for funds from overseas. It is said that donors insist on proof of previous work.
That is why these associations after organising seminars and workshops take pictures, and make provisions for press coverage as evidence.A good number of people have castigated these associations on the strength that when these funds are finally received, the directors instead use the money to buy posh cars and construct mansions and spend the rest on the best young girls around.
The Northwest Province has uncountable associations, CIGs and NGOs passing around for advocates of the less privileged. Yet, the number of street children and the desperation of some old people, orphans and widows are on the rise.
This has evoked rhetorical questions as to whether these associations really advocate the rights of destitute people?Street children, as young as 10, have taken the Bamenda Municipal Stadium as a home, engaging in drug consumption. They also engage in robbery as pass as porters, targeting housewives who go to the market on a daily basis.
They also live in school fields, cemeteries especially at night where they do awful activities like casting dices, playing cards, draughts, and many other dangerous games.
Franklin Soh is an underprivileged child who roams the streets in Bamenda.
He blames his mother for her irresponsibility, which led him into the streets. His mother did not only refuse to show him his father when he demanded to know him, but did not send him to school as well.
Widows are victims of their in-laws and others, without anybody coming to their rescue, while old retired people are seen frustrated at public places and banks waiting for their meagre pensions.
The Northwest Delegate of Social Affairs, Mr. Wesley Achuah Asanji, has positive impressions about these associations, but noted that some of them are not reliable. Asanji revealed that when HIPC funds are disbursed to social centres like his, they are given to individuals and Common Initiative Groups on presentations of projects.
To buttress this fact, the President of Community Association for the Marginal Population, CAMWALD, Mrs. Jennet Agnes Mbah, said the administration and the beneficiaries are the only people who could testify their efforts in assisting the underprivileged.
She, however, acknowledged the fact that many people are either sceptical or do not appreciate what NGOs, CIGs and other associations do. She explained that during a recent seminar in Yaounde organised by Education and Scientific Innovations, the officials, commissioned them to go into the communities and identify the less privileged.
Disagreeing with claims that associations are doing their work, the Coordinator of the Literacy Campaign Programme for the Visually Impaired, Mr. Fidel Tancho, a blind man, said most associations operate for self-fish reasons.
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