WITH HIGH-SOUNDING titles like Mahila Sewa
Trust, Adarsh Sewa Sansthan, they call themselves non-profit
organizations working for public good. But the only ‘sewa’ (service)
they seem to have rendered so far is to line their own pockets with
foreign funds collected in the name of such
overt welfare schemes.
The district administration here has prepared a list of such erring Non
Government Organisations (NGOs) that having gathered foreign aide
disappeared from the scene. “Of the 23 such organizations that we had
randomly selected from a list of 108 in the city, 11 did not exist on
the address given by them,” said additional district magistrate
(executive) NP Singh. That’s almost 50 per cent.
“We would now be writing to the Union Home Ministry to blacklist
these outfits to prevent them from receiving any foreign aid in future,”
said the ADM. According to Singh, they were provided a list of 108 city
NGOs, who had received foreign contributions during 2002-03 from the
Union Home Ministry, which had sought a report from them on the
activities of these organizations as well as the end-utilisation of
funds.
Additional city magistrate (V) Anil Kumar Singh was subsequently, put
on the job to verify the antecedents of the agencies in his areas that
had received money from abroad. Of the 23 such odd NGOs that were
selected for random survey, the ACM discovered that 11 had simply
vanished from the scene. They included ‘Nalanda’ in Aliganj, Society for
Aid and Development in Indira Nagar, The National Society for Blinds,
Indira Nagar, Thomas Educational Christian Society, Vikas Nagar, Arthik
Vikas Evam Jan Kalyan Sansthan C-736 Indira Nagar, Institute for
Research and Documentation in Social Science, Vikram Khand, Gomti Nagar.
“Then there were a couple of other agencies like Assemblies of God
Mission and Catholic Diocese of Lucknow, which were untraceable, as no
address was provided in the list sent to us by the authorities,” said an
administration official. Here it is pertinent to mention that under
Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act of 1976 (FCRA) any Indian
organisation or individual who seeks to receive foreign contributions
has to obtain a clearance from the Ministry of Home Affairs.
“While it would be wrong to tar all the NGOs with the same brush, it
is also an accepted fact that a large number of these outfits that claim
to be working in the cultural, social, educational, health and
religious sectors divert funds or misuse them for personal gains,” said
ADM Singh.
The irony, however, is that there is no proper audit-mechanism to
keep a check on how the money is being spent, he added. He said it was
because of this loophole in the law, several organizations got away
without maintaining proper records or accounts of the funds received by
them, said Singh. Indeed, the Centre, had mooted a Bill on foreign
contributions in 2005 to give more teeth to the authorities to rein in
erring NGOs. But it is yet to be cleared by the Parliament.
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