| Taking the money out of the charity game? Tusk tusk. |
Provisions in the draft law, he said, would prevent NGOs from spending excessive amounts of money on themselves. For example, he said, "They can use a car costing 12,000 US dollars instead of using a 40,000 dollar car."There is a certain amount of resentment in Afghanistan directed toward the "white Land Cruiser crowd", as NGO workers are sometimes known. Bashar Dost said that when an NGO receives funds, either from a government or a non-governmental source, they must distribute most of those funds to the people of Afghanistan. He says out of 4.5 billion dollars pledged to Afghanistan by international donors at the Tokyo conference last year, about a third has been allocated to international NGOs, the same again to the United Nations, and the roughly one third directly to the government of Afghanistan. "I have yet to see an NGO that has spent 80 per cent of its money for the benefit of the Afghans and 20 per cent for their own benefit," Bashar Dost said. "International NGOs get big amounts of money from their own nations just by showing them sensitive pictures and videos of Afghan people, and there are even some individuals who give all their salaries to NGOs to spend it on charity here, but they [NGOs] spend all the money on themselves, and we are unable to find out how much money they originally received in charitable funds," he said.
He also criticised NGOs - which are tax exempt - for getting privileged access to government contracts that tax-paying commercial companies should have won. He believes they have inside access to contracts because of their close relationships with government officials, including ministers, some of who were formerly their employees. At the same time, he said, many qualified government employees have gone to work for NGOs where the salaries are higher. "We want the reconstruction carried out economically, and to be handled by private companies which are be under the control and supervision of the government," said Bashar Dost. "Donors should contract directly with the companies — this is the rule all over the world..."