April 14, 2006	Friday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 15, 1427

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ISLAMABAD, April 13: Prime Minister’s Secretariat has asked the social welfare ministry to start working on a new law for registration and an effective monitoring of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), reliable sources told Dawn.

At present there are a number of acts and ordinances under which an NGO can get registered with the federal or provincial governments.

Voluntary social welfare agencies ordinance, 1961; the societies registration act, 1860; the trust act, 1882; the charitable endowment act, 1890 and the companies ordinance act, 1984 are some of the laws.

According to rough estimates, there are more than 80,000 NGOs working in the country, and the governments with which they are registered do not have any mechanism to monitor them.

In the aftermath of the earthquake tragedy, massive funding poured into the country, and the number of NGOs increased.

Technically speaking, every NGO is supposed to get permission from the government before accepting donations from national or international donors. However, due to lack of enforcement mechanism and unclear registration procedures, it is never followed.

Talking to Dawn, a senior official at the social welfare ministry said the ministry had started working on the new law which was still in its ‘embryonic stage’.

However, the official said, this time the government looked very serious and hopefully the issue of NGOs’ streamlining would be settled once and for all.

It is worth mentioning here that India and even Bangladesh have well established registration as well as monitoring mechanisms of NGOs.

“Unfortunately, over the years, despite some serious efforts, successive governments had never been able to come up with some acceptable law,” the official said.

Back in 1992 an effort was made, but due to a stand off between representatives of NGOs and government, the issue remained in a limbo.

Again an ordinance, ‘Non-Profit Organizations (NPOs) Ordinance 2002’, was proposed for the regularisation of this sector, but due to serious differences between this sector and government, no progress could be made.

It is worth mentioning here that a general perception at the grass-root level about NGOs is not encouraging, and certain level of distrust persists between NGOs and general masses, despite the fact that several organizations have been doing a tremendous job.

“If at all an NGO is found guilty of misusing funds or its performance is not up to the standard, the government can only cancel its registration,” the official said.

However, under the proposed law, auditing of funding, regular monitoring and annual report writing are some of the provisions which will be made mandatory for every NGO.

Since social welfare sector is playing an important role throughout the world for the development of a society, it needed to be both streamlined and encouraged by the government, the official added.

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