LONDON: Millions of dollars of European Union aid to developing countries is being wasted because of a bureaucratic shambles at the heart of the system and allegations of financial irregularities and lack of control.

A series of hard-hitting evaluation reports commissioned by the EU reveals serious problems in the handing out of development money, much of it provided by the British government. Charities involved in providing aid to the developing world have accused the EU of “total incompetence.”

The reports over the past six months were commissioned by EuropeAid, the development arm of the EU.

The most recent report, on aid to Albania over the last five years, said that the European Commission’s analysis of the country had been “superficial” and that programmes were “unrealistic, characterized by very ambitious objectives, but without the means to achieve them.”

Similar problems were found in aid programmes to Angola, Uganda and Mozambique.

The reports comes just days after Western countries including Britain, France and the US were accused of providing “recycled peanuts” after agreeing to an extra $1 billion in debt relief for the world’s poorest nations.

“The UK government’s policy of diverting most of the annual overseas development budget away from specialist “hands on” Third World aid agencies and towards large multilateral organizations such as the United Nations and the European Union is drastically reducing the level of help getting through to the people who need it most,” said Dr Christie Peacock, chief executive of Farm-Africa.

Peacock said that projects organized by the charity had become bogged down in bureaucracy, that application papers for funding had been lost, and that projects had been delayed for up to two years.—Dawn/The Observer News Service