PESHAWAR, June 26: The NWFP government has set up monitoring committees to check accounts and activities of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in all the 24 districts of the province, sources said.

An official said the Society Act 1860, Social Welfare Ordinance 1961 and the other laws under which NGOs were registered in the country did not carry any provision to check movable and immovable assets of the foreign-funded NGOs.

It was due to the absence of any legal mechanism to check the accounts of these bodies that the committees had been constituted.

A recent meeting in Peshawar, presided over by NWFP Chief Secretary Ijaz Qureshi, had decided to set up district-level monitoring committees.

Assistant coordination officers, district officers of the social welfare department and district officers of the industry department are members of the monitoring committees in each of the districts. They will submit their reports to the provincial government on quarterly basis.

Sources in the provincial industries, commerce and labour department said that both federal and provincial governments had concerns about unaccountable assets and financial sources of the NGOs, but were unable to look into their affairs.

These sources said that in the aftermath of the war on terror foreign secret agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, also checked accounts and sources of funding of various NGOs. Some NGOs received donations through Hundi, they said.

Officials said that in the absence of any legal provisions or tool, the government depended on secret agencies to check bank accounts and assets of the NGOs. However, state agencies did not provide any details to the departments concerned.

Only the industries department, which enrols NGOs under the Society Act 1860, registered over 1,500 NGOs in the NWFP. All NGOs receive funds or donations from donor agencies or charity organisations abroad for their activities including health, education, environment, orphanage centres, poverty and other activities.