Corruption and Governance issues of INGOs Diplomatic Bubbles Saeed Minhas Islamabad: Though it s a budgetary season in Pakistan, yet

our diplomat friends continue to question the governance patterns of this country where they believe corruption has become more of a socially accepted norm than something odd. Attending one of many diplomatic functions held during the past one week including, Italian, Czheck Republic, Russian and Azerbaijan just few to mention here, there are several things to be cited here but just to keep my focus on corruption I can tell you without any exaggeration that majority of the diplomats had dozens of stories outlining that how from political to uniformed ruling elite is hungry after dollars and not to do anything for the people of Pakistan. Just to move my case on when I started mentioning that how various donors have gone crazy to just dump their money in Pakistan through their foreign consultants that already tarnished image of local NGO elite has become even more questionable. As I cited just few cases where USAID funded projects were sold out for a kick back of 25 to 30 per cent for FATA regions and how a consortium of 26 international aid agencies siphoned off over thirty million Euros during the rehabilitation phase of internally displaced people when Pakistan army was busy doing operations in Swat. A friend from Belgium high offices just interrupted me there to remind me that how concerned our country s rulers are about governance. His narration not only kept all his fellow diplomats but even many pen-pushers dumbfound. For sensitivities of diplomatic norms and privacy, I would not name the real players but would still try to quote his version here for your consumption and for you to make a judgment rather comparison between our ruling elite and the donors. Replete with all sorts of administrative hiccups, the Belgium high up stated that a team of doctors and philanthropists from his native country arrived in Pakistan immediately after the last year s devastating floods and soon identified a completely ruined basic health unit between Multan and DG Khan (two-hour s drive from Prime Minister Gilani s hometown). Flood hit and busted facility was cleaned up, the team raised money from back home to equip the health facility with state of the art equipments and operation theatres and left after taking all this pain with the hope that now this God-for-Saken land will have a modern health facility after handing it over to local state officials. Six months later, when they arrived just to check on the status of that facility and with the aim that if it needs any upgradation or service parts for the costly machinery they had helped place their with their own money and efforts, what they found on ground was a shut down facility where only a chowkidar (guardsman) was making sure that nothing but dust and desert sand gets in to warmth the costly machines but not a human being. Many parts of the machinery had gone missing and spiders were having a jolly good time dancing on the beds, machines and empty chairs of doctors and nursing units, they observed when they finally managed to get into the facility after greasing the palms of the local chowkidar.

Shocked and furious the team flew back to Islamabad instead of meeting the local administration to listen to their lame excuses. They finally hurried back to their home country but not before leaving this verbal note for all of us to ponder that Never again, they are going to come to this country for helping the people where state even does not have the moral and social responsibility to ensure running of a latest health facility on which they did not have to spend a single penny from state exchequer. Agreeing in totality and facing this commotion, which our ruling elite and verbal champs sitting in the parliament always bring upon us during such interactions, I had to just mention few examples to change the course of discussion from corruption towards a classic loot sale of donor funded projects going on in Pakistan without any checks and balances. Not even that most of the projects, and I cited many funded and operated by UN, EU, USAID and others especially in rural areas through many international and national NGOs where not even work is not done as per the TORs and whatever is done is given a clean chit by a racket of handpicked evaluators, monitors and even chartered accountants. The major kick backs, because I knew many of those who are buying stuff for these NGOs from China whereas it is a violation of the charter of UN and all donors that everything should be bought from within the country to help stimulate the local economy and involve the local populace in the whole process is being managed from procurements. One such example was that of distributing radio sets amongst FATA population and it got delayed just because of the supplier could not bring radio sets in time due to closure of Silk route between Pakistan and China due to land sliding and also because of the Hunza lake and can you imagine that the radio sets arrived once the project was almost finished. The reason for buying from China was not only overlooked by donors but also covered up very swiftly by the friendly evaluators and later by the well paid out chartered accountants. In most of these cases both the evaluators and accountants were also some foreign nationals not Pakistanis. When corruption talks through dollars, then it does not matter that who is on the receiving end, commented one of the seasoned public sector development agent standing amongst us. He had his own tales to add to this foray on INGOs but it remains a fact that without developing a credible monitoring and evaluation mechanism to check back the corruption amongst NGO sector, it will remain a disaster in the making where nothing else but another actor of development will lose trust of the people. No matter how many bags of dollars US or EU or anyone else brings to countries like Pakistan, the case studies won t be very different from that of Africa where not only drug scandals but even human organ and sex trade allegations were also leveled on the NGOs and they were in many cases found defenseless yet got away because it would have been more humiliating for the donor countries like US and EU to not only face embarrassment at the world forums but also at the domestic fronts where innocent people keep allowing their respective governments to use their tax moneys for helping the poor. But just in case they come to know, and they should be, that their monies are used to finance luxury living of the consultants many of whom don t even go to any rural areas but want to go on stress leave after every three months to Bangkok or central Asia so that they can end their boredom which they had gathered while sitting in Islamabad and riding on chauffer driven cars. Let s hope that not only donors wake up to this call of self accountability and change their luxurious yet corrupt ways of using the public and charity funds to actually do something for the people of Pakistan otherwise they will also be standing next to our corrupt rulers and bureaucracy in the days to come,

commented another senior diplomat from Pakistan s foreign office. Having said that I had to tell my diplomat friends before bidding adieu to all of them for the night that Pakistan and many other countries like us need donors charity as well as grants and technical expertise but in a transparent, accountable and realistic manner not the way they are doing now.