Chakwera urges Malawians to demand accountability from NGOs
President Dr. Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera had urged Malawians to take interest in demanding transparency and accountability from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that operate in their communities.
Speaking at the NGO Day celebrations at Bingu International Convention Centre (BICC) in Lilongwe on Thursday, President Chakwera was alarmed by a report, which showed that 40 NGOs closed their operations in the past year due to lack of funding.
He attributed this to what he termed as ‘historic neglect of lack of premise and purpose by majority of the organizations operating in Malawi.
“The first major problem is that without a clear premise and purpose for the creation of any NGO, it has been impossible to assess and regulate the alignment of the sector with our national development goals, the effectiveness of the sector in building the kind of capacity that leads to greater self-reliance instead of greater dependence, and the compliance of the sector with our laws,” he said.
Added Chakwera, “The second major problem with any lack of clarity about the premise and purpose of what is practiced in the sector is that it has led to needless and wasteful duplications and redundancies, not to mention conflicts of interest, when what we need at this stage in our nation’s development are organizations that have a clear focus, clear targets, clear timelines, clear points of synergy and collaboration with each other and with state actors, and crucially, clear metrics and prerequisites for graduation.”
At this point, the President challenged Malawians to seek a deeper understanding of how closures of the NGOs impact the communities they served, how NGOs end up losing their funding, or how there can be better anticipation of and preparation for these kinds of disruptions in the sector.
President Chakwera also encouraged NGOs to collectively assess and determine their programs that have demonstrable impact on achieving our development goals as a return on investment so that those can become the blueprint for future funding instead of programs that drain resources to keep people busy.
He warned that wastage of resources on activities and programs that have no tangible or measurable outcomes is the last thing Malawi needs.
“Thankfully, there are stellar examples in the sector of NGOs that are delivering clear outcomes, constructing schools, hospitals, and homes for the vulnerable; educating the masses in line with our human capitalization agenda; introducing communities to modern agricultural techniques; and providing relief during times of disaster in support of the strategies laid out by the disaster management unit in my office. These exemplary NGOs are critical to setting the pace in how to partner and collaborate with government to bring tangible and lasting transformation to Malawians,” he said.
Sure NGOs have to be accountable, for instance there is an NGO by the name ‘The Stephanos’ ; it has sunk a borehole in Lilongwe Mpenu and during the handover ceremony it was appalling to note that the borehole has been sunk @ a whooping MK14 Million! C’mon which drilling company in malawi is doing that?
can this NGO please explain this
Yes, but the majority of NGOs are far much better than government if we choose to be honest. They are always audited, their reports known and recommendations made are followed through unlike government. In government even their own huge projects some of which are implemented bfrom loans are sedomly audited let alone be evaluated by independent evaluators. It just life as usual. I challenge government to give some of their activities to NzgOs to implement we can certainly see impact and change