A rchive Date
[ 14-08-2005 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Sri Lanka ]
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[http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Worthington_Peter/2005/08/14/1172126.html
Wave of corruption
By PETER WORTHINGTON
Sun, August 14, 2005
It was filmmaker Garth Pritchard, writing in the Sun from Sri Lanka last winter, who first documented that virtually no Canadian aid was reaching victims of the Christmas tsunami disaster.
Since then, and especially since the G-8 summit meeting in Gleneagles, Scotland, the failure of foreign aid to reach those for whom it is intended has escalated into something of a scandal.
It's a scandal that has been brewing for years. Writing in Britain's Spectator magazine, Mark Steyn is the most recent -- and most persuasive -- to note the failure of foreign aid to reach the victims. Especially Tsunami victims.
Steyn calls it the "Tsunami Tshakedown."
He writes: "The tsunami may have been unprecedented, but what followed was business as usual -- the sloth and corruption of government, the feebleness of brand-name NGOs, the compassion exhibitionism of the transnational jet set."
Just as Pritchard angrily noted that mostly it was Canadian soldiers of DART (Disaster Assistance Relief Team) who physically helped victims, Steyn and others note that the first and greatest help after the disaster came from sailors of a U.S. aircraft carrier that rushed to the scene. The Australian navy provided similar relief.
It's an oft-repeated reality: In times of crisis, the military are the world's most effective relief workers; they ignore red tape and do what has to be done.
To some it is scandalous (to others inevitable) that Oxfam had to pay close to $1 million to Sri Lankan customs officials before their four-wheel drive vehicles were allowed in the country to deliver relief.
While these vehicles stood in port, Oxfam was charged around $5,000 a day -- all for the privilege of helping victims.
It is reminiscent of Col. Mengistu's regime charging duty on aid coming into Ethiopia during the 1984 famine, then diverting food aid to the army.
It gets worse. A dozen UNICEF ambulances sent to Indonesia spent two months idle on the dock.
Huge containers of drinking water sent by the Red Cross in January, are reported to still be in the port because their documentation can't be found.
Some 25% of the aid sent to Sri Lanka since the tsunami still sits in containers in Colombo, and a thousand large containers of aid are sit unopened and unprocessed, in the port of Medan.
When he was with DART, Pritchard noted that Canadian aid was channeled through CIDA, which he found virtually useless.
Padre Jim Hardwick, with the 200 Canadian soldiers bringing relief to Sri Lankans, was so upset at the lack of aid getting through, that he wrote his wife about it.
She contacted a local school that raised $800 for tsunami relief, and instead of sending it to the Red Cross, the money was sent to Padre Hardwick who spent it on books that enabled the local school to reopen.
Fresh in memories is Prime Minister Paul Martin initially pledging $1 million for tsunami relief, then $8 million, then promising to match the $40 million Canadians donated, and finally upping the total to $425 million.
Where is that money today? It's anyone's guess. The government gave it to CIDA to distribute, with no check on how it was to be spent. CIDA apparently funneled it to various non-government aid groups, also with no accounting of how it would be spent.
The G-8 countries pledged an extra $25 billion in aid for Africa, and urged forgiving debts to the 14 poorest countries as an incentive for them to be more responsible.
What a sorry joke.
Judging from the record, foreign aid by developed countries goes mostly to salving the consciences of the giver, and too often results in keeping recipient countries in bondage to dictators and tyrants who use the money to buy guns and solidify power.
It was ever thus.
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