Gottfried Mernyi hat gesagt...

I appreciate a lot the comment from Vicky Ntetema - Asante sana !

I think her approach "No accountability, no funds" is right, but I think it should be completed by a campaign "publish, whom and what you fund".

I think not only the individual donors in Europe or Northern America should know, how and where their contributions are used, but also the civil society and the grass-root organisations should know, who is funding which partner in their country. Mutual accountability is needed - this means, that audited annual financial statements should be available for everybody. If NGOs, churches, missions are demanding more commitment from governments, they have to show evidence, who is benefiting from their activities - in the North and in the South.

Gottfried Mernyi, EAWM

gottfried.mernyi@evang-eza.at

Dear Gottfried,

thank you for your comments. I fully support what you are saying and I would like to ad that such initiatives supporting transparency in the aid business should be taken up by governments and supported by the independent media in order to make the whole civic society participating AND responsible.

This would help to foster development and would likely lead towards societies where the words "equality, solidarity" and "common wealth" would not longer stay as mere lip services in conferences and policy papers issued by NGOs, UN agencies, FBOs and governments whose representatives often directly benefit from the current (bad!) situation of not showing transparency and accountability, when it comes to their own structures. Many are out of control here. No structures for that. It seems some have a lot to hide and this leads to the effect that "help" sometimes does more bad than good.

The flow of information has to be increased.

It will certainly not help, if for example the Lutheran Church in Tanzania (ELCT) and their employees from partner missions urge the president and government of Tanzania to put more money to their hospitals ( http://www.lmc.or.tz/news.html )as long as half of the internal (!) ELCT audit reports from the different diocese for 2004/2005 (as long as they exist at all) are ranked as "qualified reports"!

It seems there is no external independent audit at all (which e.g is a routine for companies ranked at the stock exchange - they show more ethics here than do-gooders). Every request for more information concerning projects and programmes to ELCT and donors ("partner missions") are obviously taken as "interference from outside". This gives the impression that some FBOs have a lot to hide.

If one checks the ELCT and LMC homepages concerning projects and hospitals, this may lead to the conclusion that there is no accountability at all and a lot of homework has to be done before these FBOs can put a request to the government of Tanzania which is representing the people of this nation. ELCT has to proof beyond any doubt, that they are serving the development of the poor and sick instead of using them as a business to acquire more funds. They have to proof, that they are able to clear criminal cases like e.g. the fruads at Bulongwa Lutheran Hospital without any delay, instead of coming down at people and media who uncovered the frauds and theft of donor and government money (e.g. dead people on the pay role, tax fraud).

Im übrigen bin ich der Meinung, dass die zuständigen Missionssekretäre in Europa zurücktreten müssen und die Finanzgebarung in Europa und Tansania vollkommen offengelegt werden muss und Verantwortliche in Tansania und in anderen Ländern zur Rechenschaft gezogen werden müssen.