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Cameroon Truck Drivers Stuck at CAR Border After Health Officials Refuse to
Accept their COVID Test Results

Moki Edwin Kindzeka

   YAOUNDE, CAMEROON - The trucking of goods and humanitarian aid from
   Cameroon to the landlocked Central African Republic has slowed to a
   trickle, raising tensions between the two sides. Despite an agreement
   that Cameroon drivers who test negative for COVID-19 would be given
   access, testing kits are in short supply at the border, forcing some
   trucks to wait weeks to cross.

   El Hadj Oumarou, the head of Cameroon's land freight transportation
   bureau, says hundreds of trucks at the border town of Garoua Boulay
   have not been given access to the Central African Republic.

   He says all attempts to convince C.A.R. transport and health officials
   that the drivers have tested negative for COVID-19 in Cameroon have
   failed.

   Oumarou says this week, Cameroon's transport minister assured truck
   drivers that the C.A.R. will accept COVID-19 test results done in
   Cameroon hospitals. But Oumarou says, the COVID-19 test results done in
   Cameroon are still rejected by C.A.R. border officials. He says he is
   scandalized that trucks, goods and humanitarian aid are blocked at the
   border for several weeks.

   The C.A.R. and Cameroon sealed their borders in March to stop the
   spread of the coronavirus, after both countries recorded cases of
   COVID-19. The landlocked C.A.R. entered an agreement with Cameroon to
   allow passage of humanitarian aid and goods from Cameroon's seaside
   town of Douala to the C.A.R. capital, Bangui.

   According to the agreement, only truck drivers who tested negative for
   COVID-19 were to enter the C.A.R. But the plan was crippled by a
   shortage of tests at the border.

   The drivers, who are mostly Cameroonians, started carrying out the
   tests in local hospitals.

   But C.A.R. officials began rejecting the results last month when the
   number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Cameroon increased to more than
   13,000.

   On Monday of this week, delegates from the two countries held a crisis
   meeting at Garoua Boulay, and the C.A.R. agreed to recognize COVID-19
   test results carried out in Cameroon.

   But C.A.R. Transport Minister Arnaud Djoubaye Abazene says the
   decisions made at the meeting were not final.

   Abazene says the mixed commission that the presidents of Cameroon and
   C.A.R. created to manage land transport will meet to examine threats
   caused by COVID-19. He says only that the commission can address all
   the misunderstandings caused at the border as a result of the
   coronavirus pandemic.

   Abazene said that once goods and supplies are brought to the border,
   C.A.R. drivers will transport them to Bangui.

   He said his country will also consider COVID-19 test results conducted
   in the C.A.R. in case the border posts run short of rapid diagnostic
   tests.

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