ISLAMABAD: With the government busy formulating a policy to monitor activities of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), scrutinise their sources of funding and seek audit reports from them, a National Assembly committee is going to review development projects being executed by the NGOs in tribal areas.

The National Assembly’s standing committee on states and frontier regions is scheduled to meet on Friday to seek details and progress of projects being executed in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) by international and local NGOs, according to the agenda of the meeting.

The committee’s chairman Mohammad Jamaluddin told Dawn that the meeting would also review development activities being carried out by government departments in the tribal areas.

Mr Jamaluddin, who belongs to South Waziristan, alleged that some of INGOs had been working in tribal areas without any check and some of their employees were reported to have been involved in anti-state activities. But, he added, most of the NGOs were doing good work and taking practical steps for the uplift of the area.

*Also read: Footprints: The threat to INGOs*

He regretted that the NGOs did not give jobs to local people. The committee has also sought the details of local and non-local staff of the NGOs, including their domiciles, and the issue will be discussed in its next meeting.

Mr Jamaluddin suggested that an institution should be constituted on a permanent basis to monitor the activities and sources of funding of the NGOs.

The federal government through a report prepared by the interior ministry informed the Supreme Court last week that it had asked the provincial governments and Islamabad’s administration to strictly monitor the working of the NGOs, scrutinise their sources of funding and seek audit reports from them.

The report said that a template had been formulated and sent to the provinces for collecting information about NGOs working in their jurisdictions.

It admitted that most of the NGOs and INGOs working in the country were doing a commendable job and providing services to people in areas where the government had not been able to deliver. But because of apprehensions about involvement of any NGO in illegal and anti-state activities, a system of strict monitoring and evaluation was required because there could be no compromise on national security, it said.

Earlier this month, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan told a Senate session that the INGOs carrying out activities harmful to the country’s security and national interest would not be allowed to function even in the face of pressure by other states and multinational bodies.

He said that his ministry was developing a transparent system to monitor the activities of NGOs under which an online system was being developed to enable anyone to check activities, funding and spending of NGOs with just one click.

The minister was responding to motion submitted by PPP’s Saeed Ghani and Hafiz Hamdullah of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl on the recent ban on Save the Children, an international NGO, and subsequent withdrawal of the ban by the government.

The minister said that he could produce the evidence to prove that several NGOs had been working in the country even without applying for registration. He alleged that about 1,000 people in the guise of NGO workers had been found involved in anti-state activities in the past.

The government had to face a severe criticism in the Senate even from its coalition partners, for its decision to ban INGOs from operating in Balochistan and Fata.

Published in Dawn, July 21st, 2015

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