The State Is Not To Be Milked

Since June 3, 2026, local media in Cameroon is awash with content on the alarming increase of dependent children listed by public servants for family allowances. This followed the sitting of the Steering Committee for the Audit Operation for Family Allowances chaired by the Minister of Finance, Louis Paul Motaze. In fact, the statistics released during that conclave are startling and preoccupying. In just 21 months, there has been an exponential upsurge in the number of children benefitting from family allowances. Figures projected by the government indicate a 55 per cent rise in relative terms. In absolute terms, the government payroll experienced a boom in family allowances from 594,728 to 923,307 between June 2024 and March 2026. This gives an increase of 328,579 ‘new births’ by State workers in less than two years. The figures are large enough to preoccupy the government, especially at a time when the State has been striving to curtail public spending and master its payroll as evidenced by its recent moves to clean-up the State payroll database. Whether it is a coincidence or not, the recent hike in the number of family allowance beneficiaries was only noticed after the Head of State, President Paul Biya through a Decree of February 21, 2024, increased family allowances per dependent child per month from FCFA 2,800 to FCFA 4,500. There is therefore a correlation between the presidential action and the recent surge in family allowances as the figures speak for themselves. One needs no soothsayer to know that some treacherous public servants have submitted fake birth certificates for ‘ghost children’ in order to earn more from the family allowance scheme. Grapevine holds that some unscrupulous State workers have lined-up about 15 children within the space of two years. It is preposterous to think that a couple will bear that number of children within that short period. But this scam is well coordinated from within the Ministry of Finance where some staff are accomplices to the fraud. It is alleged that perpetrators of the scheme in the Ministry of Finance who work with agents, negotiate for 50 per cent of the booty. That is, fake and backdated birth certificates and other supporting documents are submitted through the agents and when family allowance arrears are paid, they are entitled to 50 per cent while the purported parent gets the remaining 50 per cent. It therefore goes without saying that the authorities of the Ministry of Finance must start by doing a self-retrospection by dismantling the various networks implanted within its services with the dubious intention to milk the State treasury dry. Authorities also have to think of digitalizing State apparatus like the civil status database and the payment of children allowances in a bid to easily detect the lacuna in the family allowance system. As the vast control campaign to clean-up the State payroll database continues with the family allowances saga, authorities should not also lose sight on the fictitious salary accounts operated by some State workers, former workers and pensioners. Hundreds of Cameroonians are still earning undue salaries from the State purse without actually working. Ghost civil servants are bleeding the State coffers when they are actually not working. The physical headcount operation launched in 2018 which enabled government to save some FCFA 30 billion annually after sieving out ghost State employees should be reinvigorated. Some former State employees who travelled abroad for greener pastures hurriedly came back home to be counted and returned to their new locations shortly after while their salaries are still being paid. Even within the national territory, some have found more lucrative jobs with private entities but still receive public service salaries. Yet, others who have transitioned to the world beyond are still being paid because their demise has not been reported. All of these dodgy attitudes go unabated thanks to the complicity of their immediate bosses who often cover up for them in r...