The sanitary kits comprising hand-wash buckets, hand sanitizers, a good quantity of face masks, tablets of washing soap and disinfectants were presented to officials of the aforementioned media organs at two separate ceremonies in Yaoundé Monday, June 1, 2020.

Solomon Tembang, Managing Editor of The Guardian Post was on hand to receive the kits handed over to them by CENPA’s Public Relations Officer, Ndi Eugene Ndi.

Staffers of the lone English language daily were told to bar the way to the novel coronavirus by strictly adhering to restrictive measures including the respect of basic hygiene and the wearing of facemasks.

The next stop of the CENPA anti-COVID-19 caravan was at the newsroom of the iconic French language daily, Le Messager. The delegation led by CENPA President Kristian Ngah Christian was welcomed by Le Messager Publisher Jean François Channon thanked the Cameroon English Language Newspaper publishers for the never-seen initiative.

The CENPA caravan continues to other media houses in Yaoundé with newsroom in the other regions to have their turn within the shortest possible delay.

CENPA holds that “journalists are even more vulnerable, unlike health personnel, because in the line of their duties in collecting information, they get in contact with people on a daily basis whose status they do not know”. 

During a press conference to unveil the initiative, the President of CENPA, Kristian Ngah Christian, who doubles as Publisher of The Guardian Post daily newspaper, said this donation aims to, “…accompany government in its efforts in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic and ensure that journalists and their working environments are protected while they cover and report on the pandemic”.

 “As the virus continues to spread, journalists themselves are constrained in their movements, with highly-limited access to events, officials, politicians and information”.

Cameroon-Info.Net recalls that this is not the first time CENPA is accompanying government to surmount tasking challenges. At the eve of back-to-school last September, CENPA doled out school kits to pupils and students in all the 13 Divisions of the crisis-hit regions.

In 2019, CENPA organised a seminar on crisis reporting and peace-building as its contribution to government efforts aimed at resolving the crisis in the two English-speaking regions. No fewer than 100 media practitioners from the North West, South West, West, Centre and Littoral regions attended the Yaoundé seminar.