HomeOld_PostsThe rot in the NGOs must end

The rot in the NGOs must end

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By Nondumiso Sibanda

A HAPPY new year to you all dear readers!
I trust that you entered 2014 in style fully taking stock of 2013 and how you can be able to improve certain aspects this year.
While everyone else has started the New Year and are up and about, the non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are still closed for the holidays.
The majority of them will be opening at the end of January.
While the rest of Zimbabwe has gone back to work, they are still lavishing off of their huge bonuses and allowances and they will get paid at the end of the months for not having worked.
Most of these NGOs closed right at the beginning of December and have now been closed for close to two months now while on full pay.
This is when the drama begins, it is proposal writing time and fundraising time for a lot of NGOs.
The months of February to May are the best ones for fundraising.
There is a group called the ‘Talibans’ in the donor circles who are busy getting kickbacks from local NGOs so that they can give them funding.
It never ceases to amaze me how NGOs are the first to point at the so-called, ‘rot’ that is killing our Government when they cannot even clamp on their own. There has never been any investigation that has taken place in Zimbabwe, which has revealed just how much NGOs are siphoning through kickbacks.
The group ‘Talibans’ is said to originate from US donors where Zimbabweans are working.
The people in these organisations agree to give someone money for funding if they agree to give a 10 – 15 percent kickback of the total amount they would have awarded.
This means that if a donor gives someone US$1,5 million, the kickback will be between US$150 000 to US$200 000.
An NGO will then have to find ways of falsifying receipts so that they justify the US$200 000 or US$150 000 payout.
While the world is crying foul at the ZBC saga, the NGOs have their own sagas that no one is talking about.
How can one person get a kickback of US$200 000 for just giving someone funding which is meant to go to communities?
This is ridiculous!
The people who are mostly prone to doing this are those who are at the helm of the funding.
In every organisation that funds, there are individuals who determine which organisation is supposed to receive funding.
It is these individuals that are approached by organisations desperate for funding, who then abuse their statuses and receive kickbacks.
Clearly this is an outright abuse of power and must be investigated by the highest authority in the land.
This issue of kickbacks is one of the act of corruption that is among these donors.
The other way of getting a kickback or ensuring that one gets paid something, is where the funder creates an organisation and puts some people to act as a front.
Thus the person who makes funding decisions will create his or her own organisation and set it up.
They will then place their friends or relatives with different surnames as front persons for that organisation.
When they fund that organisation, they will receive payments from their friends and family members who are in the organisation.
How different is this then from so-called ghost workers?
This organisation is as good as a ghost one because these people do not really exist.
Since the person from the donor is the one who monitors the so-called projects that take place, they can even pretend that there are programmes being conducted and even falsify reports that certain work has been done when it has not been done.
Usually such information comes out after a person has already left the donor organisation.
Nothing, however, can be done to them because donors do not want to give themselves a bad name in public.
So I ask dear reader, who is fooling who in this scenario?
We hear a lot of organisations talking about good governance, accountability and democracy when they themselves cannot be accountable of for the funds they receive, when they themselves are busy receiving and giving kickbacks and falsifying reports and documents.
Why then do we continue having NGOs monitoring Government activities when there is no one monitoring them?
It does not make sense at all.
NGOs must be monitored and such kickbacks must be exposed.
It is disgusting to say the least and should not be allowed to continue.
So this year, my new year’s resolution is exposing the rot.
Please send through the gory details of the rot in the NGO sector.
I too will be investigating.
Aluta continua!

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