KARACHI, April 18: Former Sindh governor Justice (retd) Fakhruddin G. Ebrahim has stressed the need for establishing an autonomous body to register, monitor and regulate the civil society organisations in the country.

He was speaking as a chief guest at a lecture on “Regulating Civil Society: Balancing integrity and Independence — Perspective from Commonwealth”, organized by the NGO Resource Centre of the Aga Khan Foundation on Thursday.

He said though there were laws governing the working of civil society organisations, they were rarely implemented. He said all the charity organisations had to submit their audited records, but very few submitted, and that also the audit was not done properly.

He suggested that it was high time that an autonomous body was set up to register, monitor and regulate the civil society organisations.

He said that with effective screening, the few blacksheep would be exposed and only the good organisations would remain in the field doing the good work.

He said that there was no shortage of charity money in the country, the only requirement was a good cause, sincerity and transparent working. Once the credibility was established, people come themselves to donate money.

He said there were a large number of people who were doing good work individually that was helping individuals and it was necessary that good work be done collectively so that more and more people could benefit from it permanently.

He said that during his tenure as governorship, he came across a beautiful building which was a home for the poor where inmates were provided free food and clothing besides skill development facilities so that they could earn a respectable livelihood.

But the home remained vacant for a long time and even when the beggars were picked up from streets and lodged in it, they ran away. The simple reason was that they made more money begging on streets than they could after getting the skills at the poor home.

Earlier, the former Chief Commissioner of the Charity Commission of England and Wales, Richard Fries, gave a detailed lecture about the working of the Charity Commission that was autonomous, its chief was selected by the home minister through a long transparent process, and who submitted its report through the minister to the parliament.

He said the commission, despite being a government department, was a non-ministerial entity that received its finances from the treasury yet enjoyed the powers bestowed upon by the Charities Act. The Charities Commission in the UK was answerable only to the courts and not to the government.

He said commission registered the civil society organizations, monitored their working and if suspected any irregularities, carried out investigations, and in extreme cases even could remove the trustees, and appoint a manager for the interim period till the new trustees took over.

He said sometimes people suspected of malpractice but, in fact, these could be incompetence, so a clear distinction needs to be made.

He said one of the main functions of the commission was also to do capacity building of the civil society organisations so that they could carry out their good work efficiently.

Mr Fries said with the holding of consultative meetings at different level, a mechanism could be developed to ensure transparency and efficiency.

Director of NGO Enhancement Programme of the Aga Khan Foundation David Bonbright, and Qadeer Baig also spoke. A question answer session followed the lectures.