TOO MANY SCAM MERCHANTS AMONG FOREIGN AID WORKERS
March 13th 2007 00:49
MANY FOREIGN AID WORKERS ARE ‘LORDS OF THE POOR’ RIP-OFF MERCHANTS WHO TAKE FROM THE RICH BUT GIVE MOSTLY TO THEMSELVES
You see them in all the back-blocks of Asia and Africa, the lords of the poor.
They’re smug and self righteous, often over-weeningly politically correct. They travel in tinted-window air-conditioned cars, they live in top-end accommodation, far batter that they’re used to at home, and they’re paid big bucks, much more than they usually get at home.
They’re foreign aid workers, people employed by a bewildering array of non governmental agencies and UN agencies. They’re professional do-gooders but their first agenda is to do good for themselves. Added to that they’re often dogmatic zealots who insist on thrusting their own brand of often either pseudo-leftist political correctness, or they’re religiously-driven savers-of-the planet touting their Christian values, new age cashed-up missionaries as such. .
Hot all aid workers are tarred with the same brush, many are volunteers who genuinely try to make a difference.
But the problems is that there are far too many rort merchants among the foreign aid workers, particularly at “executive” and while their excesses are increasingly catalogued in, for example, Asian newspapers, most western papers haven’t got a handle on the inequities at all and give this aspect scant coverage.
But occasionally words of disquiet seep into the western media.
Last November The Australian’s Mark Dodd reported that “Hundreds of thousands of dollars of Australian aid is wasted on expatriate salaries and the running costs of big Cambodian-based international aid groups, hindering assistance to 40,000 landmine victims.”
Dodd reported claims that 80 percent of aid paid to international aid organisations based in Cambodia “goes straight out again in the form of high expatriate salary packages and running costs.”
A letter writer to the Thai-based part US-funded Irrawaddy Journal, Ko Aung , recently complained about the UN’s well paid staff in his home country, Myanmar (Burma), calling them the “lords of the poor.” Ko Aung wrote, “Burma has become a black market for humanitarian assistance, in which the poor, vulnerable Burmese people are a commodity to sell to donor countries. Who is selling them? Not the junta this time, but the UN’s international staff in Burma. They try to sell these people to keep their self-created positions and good salaries. They are send ready-made or fake reports to their regional offices, headquarters or donor countries, in which they say how much they have achieved and spent on programs. Actually, this is not the case.
“As far as I know, only less than 10 percent of their project money goes to the people in need. But they stick to their so-called motto, ‘something is better than nothing.’ And those UN people blame the pro-democracy groups who have questioned their transparency and accountability.
“The UN's bureaucratic mechanism is a good shield for those UN staff to conceal the reality of what’s happening in Burma. Is it humanitarian assistance or humanitarian exploitation?”
Dr Saw Win, who about three years once gave me a Buddhist blessing in which he declared me protected from 98 diseases, wrote an interesting piece in the Myanmar-language journal Ray of Light, pointing out that UN and international NGOs are paid up to 25 times more than local staff, plus receive additional benefits such as housing, travel allowances, health and other insurance, overseas retreats and the reimbursement of school fees for their children. Many live in exclusive areas of Yangon (Rangoon), such as Golden Valley.
Saw Win said the foreign staff from the NGOS behaved like “masters,” and questioned the proportion of aid funds spent on salaries and overheads compared with the amount reaching the people.
You see them in all the back-blocks of Asia and Africa, the lords of the poor.
They’re smug and self righteous, often over-weeningly politically correct. They travel in tinted-window air-conditioned cars, they live in top-end accommodation, far batter that they’re used to at home, and they’re paid big bucks, much more than they usually get at home.
They’re foreign aid workers, people employed by a bewildering array of non governmental agencies and UN agencies. They’re professional do-gooders but their first agenda is to do good for themselves. Added to that they’re often dogmatic zealots who insist on thrusting their own brand of often either pseudo-leftist political correctness, or they’re religiously-driven savers-of-the planet touting their Christian values, new age cashed-up missionaries as such. .
But the problems is that there are far too many rort merchants among the foreign aid workers, particularly at “executive” and while their excesses are increasingly catalogued in, for example, Asian newspapers, most western papers haven’t got a handle on the inequities at all and give this aspect scant coverage.
But occasionally words of disquiet seep into the western media.
Last November The Australian’s Mark Dodd reported that “Hundreds of thousands of dollars of Australian aid is wasted on expatriate salaries and the running costs of big Cambodian-based international aid groups, hindering assistance to 40,000 landmine victims.”
Dodd reported claims that 80 percent of aid paid to international aid organisations based in Cambodia “goes straight out again in the form of high expatriate salary packages and running costs.”
“As far as I know, only less than 10 percent of their project money goes to the people in need. But they stick to their so-called motto, ‘something is better than nothing.’ And those UN people blame the pro-democracy groups who have questioned their transparency and accountability.
“The UN's bureaucratic mechanism is a good shield for those UN staff to conceal the reality of what’s happening in Burma. Is it humanitarian assistance or humanitarian exploitation?”
Dr Saw Win, who about three years once gave me a Buddhist blessing in which he declared me protected from 98 diseases, wrote an interesting piece in the Myanmar-language journal Ray of Light, pointing out that UN and international NGOs are paid up to 25 times more than local staff, plus receive additional benefits such as housing, travel allowances, health and other insurance, overseas retreats and the reimbursement of school fees for their children. Many live in exclusive areas of Yangon (Rangoon), such as Golden Valley.
Saw Win said the foreign staff from the NGOS behaved like “masters,” and questioned the proportion of aid funds spent on salaries and overheads compared with the amount reaching the people.
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