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Monday, 31 July 2006 |
The December 26, 2004 tsunami generated a tidal wave of sympathy worldwide. International agencies and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) had little trouble in collecting millions of dollars as tsunami aid for the 11 countries affected by the calamity. Sri Lanka, being one of the worst-hit countries, received particular attention, writes Editorial, Daily News 310706 at http://www.dailynews.lk/
Forwarded by Budhi Mulyawan 310706.
Newspapers reported yesterday that the Parliamentary Select Committee investigating operations of NGOs has charged that the NGOs had misappropriated tsunami funds exceeding US$ 1 billion.
This is a vast sum of money by any stretch of the imagination and one can only surmise as to how many tsunami-hit families could have benefitted from such largesse.
This has apparently not been the case. The money has never really reached the intended targets and disappeared deep into the pockets of some NGOs.
Sri Lanka has a myriad of NGOs, some of which are plainly limited to nameboards. They exist solely to collect funds from local and foreign sources ostensibly for various humanitarian projects, including the tsunami.
It is no secret that several hundreds of NGOs sprang up virtually overnight after the tsunami to take advantage of the generosity of people who were moved by the tragedy.
They can get away with such swindles thanks to the lax enforcement of laws relating to NGOs in Sri Lanka. As the committee has pointed out, the financial transactions of NGOs in Sri Lanka are not transparent.
There is little or no monitoring of NGO activity, including fundraising. This has serious implications for a developing country such as Sri Lanka, as some NGOs have been known to be fronts for groups that threaten national security or a cover for religious conversion.
It is thus time for the Government and the NGO Secretariat to act fast to stem the rot. If existing legal provisions are inadequate to monitor them, new legislation should be passed.
This should cover a monitoring process that begins when an NGO is registered and scrutinises its transactions every step of the way. The NGOs' roles and parameters should be strictly spelt out, so that they cannot step beyond the defined subject areas.
This does not mean that all NGOs are bad. But such legislation will expose the bad eggs and in the long run, help minimise corruption in the NGO sector.
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