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Since the early 1970s, right after liberation when Bangladesh was a war-damaged land, NGOs went to work in a society that was absolutely broken down. A few international development partners financed the NGOs to help them reconstruct the infrastructure of the country. This was welcomed by the government and the people, although it was highly challenging for the organizations which were at that time largely unknown.
Especially challenging was working in the field of women's and children's health, hygiene and nutrition, in a conservative Muslim-majority society where people were accustomed to relying on unscientific traditional healing methods rather than seeing medical doctors and other health professionals. Programs that sought to educate girls and women struggled under continuous "fatwas," or verdicts given by the Muslim mullahs, objecting to them as "un-Islamic."
NGOs introduced many new ideas such as human rights, which had been ignored by the government for decades. The groups that dared to raise such issues were often called "agents of international vested interests" by the public officials, who refused to cooperate with them. The offices of human rights groups were often raided and their workers were sued, intimidated and threatened. Even the disbursement of foreign aid was blocked by some regional governments.
Many organizations have also been involved in constructing roads, bridges and culverts in rural areas to improve transportation for the underprivileged segments of society.
Microcredit, which has become popular since Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Prize for his Grameen Bank last year, was one of the successful initiatives undertaken by NGO leaders in the 1970s. People who could not borrow from public banks viewed the access to funds provided by microcredit facilities as a miracle. However, there were also many complaints and allegations against this program by those who suffered under inhuman repayment policies as well as controversial interest rates.
In the 1980s, when neglected segments of society began to receive benefits from NGOs, their popularity increased rapidly. Creating NGOs in new localities soon became a fashion, even a mania for some people. Social service officials who approved the registration of organizations, and the NGO Affairs Bureau that disbursed funds from foreign donors to them for certain activities, became uncontrollably greedy to earn money through these processes.
A culture of paying bribes to these officials soon developed. Many NGOs raised their own money for years to prove their credibility and expertise before winning grants from foreign donors. Yet to obtain the release of overseas funds they had to pay bribes to corrupt officials. Paying bribes turned into a "due" payment for the bureau officials, clerks, office bearers and brokers.
Now there is an established saying that "the tables, chairs and even the dust of the NGO Affairs Bureau take bribes." Officials and staff of the social service and NGO bureaus register organizations in their own or relatives' names to earn money. It is easy for them to appeal to foreign donors, as they have all their names and addresses. Some of the less educated office bearers may request or force the skilled professionals of the established NGOs, who can write English, to prepare at least one project each for the organizations owned by the staff so they and their families will not have to work for the next generation or two.
Thousands of NGOs are in reality family clubs -- the wives, sons, daughters, in-laws and relatives of the leaders are all on their executive committees. They make fake activities reports to submit to various agencies and draw attention from foreign donors. If an international aid group can be tempted to fund such an organization, it will change that family's fate and future.
Most NGOs are able to use money for their own purposes. For instance, there are programs to build awareness among grassroots people in villages around the country. There will be money allocated for the staff involved in fieldwork, including travel, food, and incentives to compensate for risks and absence from their families. There are funds for developing program materials and distributing flip charts, posters, leaflets, brochures, handouts, books, pamphlets, pens, notepads, bags and folders. There are meals and snacks for staff and other stakeholders, and honorariums for experts and consultants. There are many ways for groups to avoid paying out the funds for the allocated purpose, and considerable amounts go to the pockets of key people in the NGOs.
Such groups' accountants have the task of validating this corruption by making fake vouchers and invoices before their annual audits. The accounting staff will either get extra money for this service or extra authority over their colleagues. The audits are basically conducted by friendly people who receive envelopes of money in exchange for keeping silent about irregularities. A final audit will be checked and approved by a chartered accountant at the cost of another envelope before the audited financial report is submitted to the donors, as well as the NGO Affairs Bureau of the government. The bureau is fully aware of these malpractices but does nothing, as it extracts its share of the funds at the very beginning of a project.
In the end, the targeted population receives very little benefit from such projects. Governmental officials who support such programs push their NGO hosts to arrange entertainment for them, along with their remuneration. Many officials refer to NGO activities as "sitting, meeting and eating." NGO leaders then finish off the projects. Their own fates, which may have been uncertain a few months back, are changed. They suddenly have luxurious private vehicles, apartments and houses; they travel around the globe to attend international conferences.
Very few people will object to this ongoing culture of malpractice. Bangladesh has around 20 million educated unemployed young people at present. A job in any of the established NGOs is a dream for them; millions are surviving on employment in this sector; they will not dig their own graves. There is no authority in the country that can monitor and correct these practices.
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(Rater Zonaki is the pseudonym of a human rights defender living in Sylhet in Bangladesh. He has been working on human rights issues in the country for more than a decade, and was a journalist in Bangladesh in the 1990s.)
