Cameroun and the International Labour Organisation  signed an agreement on Wednesday in Bamenda to recruit nearly 2,500 young people from the Northwest as part of the Ring Road construction project.

This decision was taken so as to curb the number of youths joining arm forces in the said Ambazonia camp . This road is essentially a loop linking the main cities of this region and opening up to neighbouring Nigeria. “We aim to recruit young people who will be trained in the different fields of civil engineering professions. This agreement has an envelope of about one billion FCFA, “said the regional delegate for Public Transport on the airwaves of the  national radio.

This labour-intensive project  plans to recruit young people in all the municipalities of the region. The operation is placed under the supervision of the municipal council , which are responsible for selecting candidates. Recruitment procedures were specified to local municipal authorities during a training and awareness-raising workshop organised for this purpose on February 15. The role of the ILO will be to give skills to these young people so that they can “strengthen their employability” and organise them in cooperatives, according to the representative of the International Labour Office (ILO), Cyrano Ombolo.

This agreement, it is learned, aims to combat the enrolment of young people in armed groups in the crisis region of the Northwest, which has been the scene for more than five years of a bloody conflict between the security forces and English-speaking separatists. According to several experts, the high level of unemployment and poverty, especially among young people, feed crime and terrorism.

In his address to the nation on December 31, the Head of State announced the start-up or continuation of many projects in various sectors, including infrastructure. Paul Biya presents these as “job niches” to be exploited by young people.