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newstyle
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Posted: Saturday September 24th, 2005 14:04 |
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Anger as £700,000 of £3m British aid to Malawi spent on US firms
David Hencke, Westminster correspondent
Monday August 29, 2005
The Guardian
The government was under attack from development charities last night for allegedly wasting hundreds of thousands of pounds on aid to Malawi by paying it to American consultancies. Two charities, ActionAid and the World Development Movement, accused the Department for International Development (DfID) of paying out "phantom aid" to the poor, after it was revealed that more than £700,000 of a £3m project was spent on hotel bills and meals for US workers.
According to an investigation by BBC Radio Five Live, DfID donated £3m to Malawi relief projects. Of that cash, £586,423 was spent on hotels for a US consultancy agency, the National Democratic Institute. Another £126,062 was allegedly spent on meals.
The BBC inquiry claims that one project funded by the DfID flew in pens and notebooks from Washington, instead of buying them locally.
Patrick Watt, of the charity ActionAid, told the programme: "This is another example of aid money not getting down to people who most urgently need to benefit from it. It's phantom aid, when what Malawi needs is real aid."
Peter Hardstaff, head of policy of the World Development Movement, said: "The government is spending money on consultants that do not benefit the country.
"This seems to have arisen because the DfID is working together with the United Sates on this project. Under US aid rules, all money given by the United States has to be spent by US firms."
The project involved spending money on setting up parliamentary committees to scrutinise the work of the Malawi government - most of the money was spent on sending in US experts on democracy and entertaining and holding meetings with Malawian MPs in hotels.
Another US group, called World Learning, was hired to distribute £4m of British money in Malawi, but the project called the Tikambirane Programme was cancelled after six months, at a cost of £300,000.
A spokesman for the DfID yesterday defended its work in Malawi, one of the world's poorest countries, but did admit: "The costs of the National Democratic Institute project were high, and we have continued to try and reduce them. For poverty to be reduced in Malawi, it needs an effective parliament and strong civil society organisations. This is why DfID has provided funding to parliament, civil society and election processes.
"We recognise that there have been some problems with the Tikambirane project. Where there have been problems, we have acted quickly to resolve them. That's going to help around 3 million people to be fed," he said.
The international development secretary, Hilary Benn MP, said: "There clearly have been some problems with the projects, and where there are lessons to be learnt, I'm very determined that we do that.
"A decade ago, 10% of DfID's budget was being spent on consultants, that's now down to 5%, so that is being reduced.
"The other concern with the National Democratic Institute was that they were using a lot of expats. We did ask them to use more Malawian staff, and they're in the process of doing that."
He defended the work of his department, adding that since Malawi's drought this year the government had committed to investing £10m in aid.
World Learning said the whole venture was "unfortunate for all of us but most of all for the Malawian organisations which should have been helped as a result."
The disclosures are likely to lead to an investigation by the National Audit Office, parliament's financial watchdog. Auditors have decided that the DfID's use of consultants should be examined to see whether it is value for money.
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/development/story/0,15709,1558532,00.html
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COLTRANE
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Posted: Sunday September 25th, 2005 02:34 |
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@NS
Funny this looks like exact scenario like the current Sierra Leone and Ghana water privatization issues and its a classic example Capitalist Money Madness and you would wonder who is shaping International development policies within the DFID and look more like Big Business are the ones doing that. The truth is Developing countries, in need of debt cancellation and aid, often have little choice other than to accept policies promoted by donors and international institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF).
In the case of Ghana, for example the decision-making process over water sector reform has been dominated by donor preference for privatisation recently, Adam Smith International was funded by DfID to work with the country’s Public Utilities Regulatory Commission to advise on how water fee revenues should be distributed. This work was paid for by £1million+ of UK aid money. Overall, DfID has given £2.8million to fund consultants working on the water privatisation programme in Ghana.
Folks in Ghana have described the whole process leading up to privatisation as largely imposed by external interests in a non-transparent process that has deliberately avoided public scrutiny and democratic debate", and it singles out the consultants as "firms [that] all happened to be ideologically favourable to privatisation and had a track record working for the large private water companies
and this push for privatisation has been compounded by World Bank and IMF economic conditions attached to loans and debt relief. Water privatisation in Ghana was a condition of receiving World Bank loans, and has since been included in Ghana’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP), which is needed to access debt relief and other funds. Although PRSPs are supposed to increase national ownership of policies, they have been shown to lack civil society consultation and are heavily influenced by the Bank and Fund, who can veto any contents they do not agree with and who ultimately sign them off.
In effect therefore, poor countries like Ghana have little or no opportunity to disagree with policies demanded by donor
Last edited on Sunday September 25th, 2005 02:56 by COLTRANE
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defyfear
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Posted: Sunday September 25th, 2005 17:21 |
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I would assume the adage here "Don't bite the hand that feeds you" is what Ghana has to follow. Even the basic needs are being sweep away by special interest. I am not surprised.
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