Cameroon denies offers to transport teaching staff to schools in conflict-prone region

More than 3,000 Cameroon teachers have denied offers by the central African state’s military to transport teaching staff to schools in the conflict-prone English-speaking regions, according to a news report by Cameroon Online.

The teachers, who fled separatists’ attacks, looting, burning, and occupation of their schools in the English-speaking regions have said that they are not sure that they will be safe as some separatist fighters are again threatening to kill teachers and students who go to school.

The renewed separatist threats are casting doubts overall schools reopening after four years of closure due to the separatist crisis.

Primary school teacher Fru Issachas said that he has refused an offer by the Cameroon military to take him to his school in the restive English-speaking region.

On October 9 he said that six of his peers accepted the offer to be transported by the military from the town of Bamenda to Ndop in the English-speaking Northwest Region.

"The authorities are now taking the teachers who cannot access their stations in armored cars. But the question is when you successfully take them there, how would the teachers cope in the absence of these armored cars," he said.

Fru Issachas said that he knows that fighters were still hiding in the bush ready to commit atrocities on teachers and students when the military transports leave.

The highest government official in the English-speaking northwestern Ngoketungia Division, Handerson Quetong has said teachers who fail to return to school will be punished.

According to Quetong, the military will also find and punish people he describes as agents sent by separatists to threaten parents if they send their children to school.