CDC Crisis : Saving The Spring Of Life

The platform is in distress under the yoke of an unending socio-political crunch agonizing the North West and South West Regions of Cameroon. It is an agroindustry whose building blocks have been falling since 2016 when the socio-political armed violence gained the stage in Cameroon. Created in 1947 to develop and run plantations of tropical crops, the CDC has served as a source of raw material for home and foreign industries. The CDC grows banana, rubber, and oil palms. From those crops, the Corporation produces semi-finished premium quality rubber, palm oil, palm kernel, palm kernel oil, and top grade edible banana for local and foreign markets. As such, it has become the socio-economic live wire of the people, employing the greatest number of Cameroonians only second to the State. For example, before the crisis, the CDC approximated its payroll at 22,000 workers (permanent and temporary).    
On account of its platform as key employer, the CDC rolled out monthly pay rolls of some FCFA 2.2 Billion before the socio-political upheaval set in. It stands unchallenged that earnings from the CDC have been enabling families to put food on their tables for 75 years running, to feed millions of Cameroonians. Even more is the fact that incomes from the CDC have supported the education of millions of people by way of didactics, infrastructure, scholarships, fees and wellbeing. Beyond its business scope, the CDC, in its corporate responsibilities, ran schools, hospitals, recreational centres, and maintained roads for communities where they operated. They offered holiday jobs for needy students. The CDC was even far more than this because it became a culture and the pride of a people. Simply put, the CDC was a way of life, the bargaining coin, and, so to speak, a platform for civilization west of the Mungo and beyond.    
That background pricks us to ponder over emerging issues of general interest about the CDC beginning with such questions: Were it not for suicidal aims, who would wage a war for the purpose of self-destruction? Who is consciously taking the risk of biting the finger that feeds them? Who is cutting the branch on which they are sitting?  Is the obstruction of the normal functioning of the CDC a plan from the top or from the bottom? Are those who maim and kill workers, to prevent CDC flow, acting as politically motivated separatists or ordinary hoodlums? Many more enquiries abound.    
The long and short of it is that any Cameroonian setting hands on the CDC to destroy it must be acting unreasonably and criminally, the CDC being the milking cow for the entire community. If one crosses the bridge and decides to cut it then they must think of their return from the journey as there may be no passage to get back home. The CDC has been a safety valve for generations and those destroying it today must be reminded that it can be a source of their salvation tomorrow.    
Before the crisis broke out in late 2016, it was reliably reported that the CDC generated some CFA 58.39 Billion from its various produce. What an income machine for the State! Yet, by 2019, some three years into the crisis, only seven of the 29 CDC production locations were in full operational capacity. Attackers had destroyed CDC farms, burnt down factories and installed armed logistics training camps in vast areas of CDC plantations. Some of the perpetrators were reported to be workers of the CDC as such on the pay roll of the Corporation. Yet, they turned against their CDC. This means that they did things and planned the evil with utmost precision knowing the backbone of the corporation and where to break it without missing. Here are we with the CDC that was founded to acquire, develop and operate extensive plantations. As such, it was designed to be the rock on which the economy of the area was to revolve and survive. By the actions of insiders combined with outsiders as early as 2020, CDC rubber production crumbled from 16.000 tons to just 4.507 tons, sources reported. Palm oil production dropped from 22.375 tons to 8.493 tons. Banana dwindled from 113.858 tons to 6.178 tons.    
On the part of human loss, CDC trade unionists reported the killing of at least 20 workers and the maiming of many more. They would not want the corporation to exist again for whatever reaso...