NGOs in Odisha are flush with foreign funds. These organisations received a cool Rs 214 crore as foreign donation in the financial year 2010-11, more than the annual budget provisions of some State Government departments.
In fact, Odisha’s NGOs are the highest recipients of foreign grant among all the tribal-dominated states in the country followed by Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Meghalaya. The least is Dadra Nagar Haveli with a total grant of just Rs 1 crore, a report of Transparency International’s Odisha Chapter said here on Thursday.
However, no NGO from Lakshadweep received any grant from any foreign country.
Chairman of Transparency International Odisha chapter and former vice-chancellor of Utkal University of Culture Bimelendyu Mohanty said, 1,240 NGOs from the State have received Rs 214.32 crore as grant from abroad for their activities ranging from welfare of children, rural development, construction and maintenance of schools, hospitals, maintenance of priests and preachers to preservation of tribal art forms.
According to the Union Home Ministry’s Foreigners’ Division which keeps tabs on the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act, from among the NGOs which received grants from abroad, as many as 39 from Odisha have received more than Rs 1 crore.
In the Rs 1 crore plus category, a Sambalpur-based NGO received a whopping Rs 17.3 crore and was at the top. There were a number of charitable trusts and missionary organisations among the top receivers.
Mohanty expressed concern over the foreign grants to NGOs in the State vis-à-vis their spending and called for greater transparency. He suggested that NGOs receiving funds for developmental activities must open themselves for social audit and make the entire fund and details of their spending available in their websites for general people to access.
Out of the expenses, establishment cost eat away the lion’s share, mostly because such expenses are very difficult to be investigated and easy to be accounted, he said, calling for more monitoring and transparency.
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