AIDS and NGOs

AIDS and NGOs

The government has established a national guidance on handling
AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome) following the
activities of various Non-Governmental Organizations to check the
rapid spread of the disease. So far, the government has not yet
provided the needed funds, so it is understandable if many NGOs
have received financial support from foreign institutions by
approaching them individually.

What is interesting is that the government's AIDS program
includes a policy which rules that only the government is
entitled to manage funds collected from various sources,
including foreign ones, and the funds are distributed through one
door, i.e. the government.

This ruling obviously reflects the "discriminative" act of the
government in handling the non-business sector. Instead of
issuing deregulations, as it has done in business sector, the
government has restricted the activities of the NGOs in their
efforts to check the spread of AIDS. What is the government's
real objective in doing so? Bureaucracy will only create
stagnation or "bottlenecks," while the AIDS cases are increasing
considerably.

DR. ADI SASONGKO

Jakarta