NGOs demand accountability from donors
Urip Hudiono, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The government should scrutinize local and international donor agencies to make sure they are not abusing the millions of dollars in funds channeled to them after the tsunami tragedy, a corruption watchdog says.
"Transparency and accountability of the funds must be applied to donors as well," Transparency International (TI) Indonesia secretary-general Emmy Hafild said on Thursday, on the sidelines of the Expert Meeting on Corruption Prevention in Tsunami Relief.
The two-day meeting -- jointly held by the government, the Asian Development Bank, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and TI -- is discussing the formulation of a better disaster relief fund management system.
Non-governmental organizations in Indonesia had already found indications that some funds would likely be embezzled or misused by the donor agencies, Emmy said.
"Many donor agencies are implementing their own programs outside of the government's planned ones," she said. "This raises a big question, because we don't know how much money has actually been raised or disbursed or is even being spent on overhead costs."
As an example, Emmy said fisherman in one village in tsunami- devastated Aceh lost 30 boats worth Rp 35 million (US$3,684) each. However, the donor agencies in charge of helping them had reported the villagers lost 200 boats worth Rp 59 million each.
Donor countries could also manipulate aid money, she said and many had imposed terms on recipient countries such as requiring them to buy only the donor countries' products.
"If such conditions are inevitable, the public should be informed in advance," she said.
It was important that recipient and donor countries, donor agencies and NGOs cooperated to set up and manage a database of the funds, Emmy said.
"The database should be put on a website and available in all publicly accessible places down to the local level, particularly where emergency relief programs and reconstruction projects are taking place." Subdistrict offices and refugee centers were good places to start, she said.
"There also needs to be an independent committee formed to supervise and audit the funds."
Even if donor agencies' confidence in recipient countries governance remained low, they should still uphold transparency themselves, she said.
"How can we push the (Indonesian) government to be transparent, if the donors themselves are not transparent?" she said.
The OECD has already laid out a legal framework to prevent corruption from donors. However, Aceh NGO Forum executive director TAF Haikal questioned the scheme. The OECD had yet to disclose the number of public officials, donor agencies or companies that had actually been sanctioned, he said. The system would only be seen to be working if donor organizations embezzling funds were singled out and punished, he said.
Meanwhile, Ministry of Finance treasury director Mulia P. Nasution said it would be difficult for the government to account for funds if the donor agencies did not report their activities.
Nasution said the government had set up a special state treasury office in Banda Aceh to manage the disbursement of the funds.
It would also allocate Rp 4 trillion (US$421 million) in the 2005 state budget revision draft, from the $2.4 billion debt moratorium it had received from the Paris Club group of creditor nations, he said.
The National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) recently revised the financial needs for the reconstruction of Aceh and parts of North Sumatra to Rp 48.76 trillion from Rp 41.74 trillion, taking into account the latest earthquake in Nias and the Simeulue islands.