NGOs receive poor response from donors for flood relief

FE Team | Published: August 11, 2007 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00

S M Jahangir
Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working in Bangladesh are yet to draw sufficient foreign fund for the current flood-related relief operations and rehabilitation activities.
Expressing their worries over the poor inflow of foreign donations for the country's flood victims, officials of the NGO Affairs Bureau said the inflow of such fund is minimal this time.
"The rate of response from the NGOs for launching emergency relief operations is about 50 per cent less this year in comparison with those of the previous floods," said a Bureau official, without elaborating details.
Normally, a significant number of NGOs start seeking permission from the Bureau for releasing foreign fund from the very beginning of any flood, said the official.
The official further said one of the reasons could be that many of the NGOs were not ready to launch their emergency relief operations for the flood-hit areas.
He said: "May be, the NGOs are more interested to launch post-flood rehabilitation programme than relief operations."
Against this backdrop, more NGOs are expected to come up with schemes both for emergency relief and post-flood rehabilitation activities, said the official.
Official sources, however, said some NGOs have already started their emergency relief operations in various flood-hit areas.
Meanwhile, both local and foreign NGOs operating in Bangladesh, received overseas fund/donation amounting to nearly US$ 322.61 in the last fiscal year (FY), which was 7.17 per cent lower than that of the previous year.
The NGOs received $ 347.53 million worth of external fund in the FY 2005-06, official figures showed.
With the last year's amount, the cumulative volume of overseas grant received by local and foreign NGOs from 1990-91 to 2006-7 was recorded at $ 3.48 billion or Tk 202.73 billion.
According to the figures, donors approved fund worth nearly $ 507.29 million for a total of 908 projects in FY 2006-07, up by $ 50.49 million from the previous year's amount.
About $ 456.79 million worth of fund was pledged by donors for 930 projects in the FY 2005-06.
Officials mentioned that some 131 local and eight foreign NGOs had got registered under the NGO Affairs Bureau during the last fiscal.
With the new ones, the total number of NGOs registered with the Bureau reached 2178 -- 1977 local and 201 foreign -- until June 30 last, official sources said.