Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-99)
MS ELIZABETH
WINTER, MR
MUDASSER HUSSEIN
SIDDIQUI AND
MR DAVID
PAGE
15 NOVEMBER 2007
Q80 James Duddridge: That is another
issue.
Ms Winter: Yes. DFID has been
given a lot more money and told to reduce its staff which is a
huge problem. The main issue is that NGOs are not asking for money
for themselves per se; they are asking to be able to provide services
to Afghans who are in great need. At the moment, having had their
programmes and funding reduced there has been a service gap, as
identified in a recent ODI[26]
report. That means many of the programmes NGOs have been running
both because of lack of funds and security have had to close.
That has been a real problem for beneficiaries. Our view is that
funding of NGOs should have continued. Some of it will trickle
down through the effective ministries, which at the moment tend
to be education, MRRD and health, but by and large NGOs have had
a major issue with that and with security and their programmes
have been at risk. Therefore, beneficiaries have suffered in terms
of the frontline work about which you have already heard. On top
of that agriculture and other programmes are under-funded; higher
education is not funded, et cetera. That is why we have been asking
for a review of the policies and where we have got to. We need
to have a look at what we have achieved so far. Maybe the pendulum
went too far in direct budgetary support, because the other aspect
of it is that the capacity development of the Afghan Government
has been done in a very piecemeal, ad hoc, unmonitored and unevaluated
way. If you talk to Afghans in the Government as I have, they
would welcome real capacity development and an independent review—the
World Bank has gone some way towards doing that, showing this
piecemeal effect—asking Afghans how they have experienced
capacity development and what they really need to be able to fulfil
the functions that they are required to fulfil in a good state
that looks after its people.
Mr Page: In terms of the ARTF,
we are an implementing partner, as is ActionAid, for the NSP.
We are working in 900 communities. The NSP has been an extremely
successful programme and has established community developments
councils in over 20,000 villages. One sees that as a hugely important
step forward having seen elections take place in some of these
CDCs. Given that elections have not taken place in Afghanistan
for 20 or 30 years they have made great strides. It has also involved
women at the CDC level, which is extremely important. We are very
pleased and proud to be involved in that. What we are disappointed
and worried about is the fact that NSP funding as such for the
whole programme is always unpredictable. As we speak today, there
is an anticipation of a shortfall of something like $200 million
in March next year. There are constant cash flow problems. For
example, between April and September of this year Afghanaid has
been paying staff out of its own reserves. There was a six-month
delay in receiving the payment for the work.
Q81 Chairman: Where was the money
coming from—the Government of Afghanistan or the trust fund?
Mr Page: It was coming from the
MRRD and the NSP organisation. There are two problems: one is
that the donors are not providing the money which they pledged;
the other is that there are cash flow problems in getting the
money out.
Q82 Chairman: I am told that part
of the problem is that it is all paid in arrears.
Mr Page: That is another factor.
For example, you are helping villagers to decide on their priorities.
This is a very democratic system. Mostly they decide on infrastructure
improvements, but you help them as a facilitating partner to put
up their proposals and they wait for 10 months to get the money.
Q83 Chairman: We met a number of
them.
Mr Page: Some of these problems
are now being sorted out, but there is uncertainty. Another worrying
thing about NSP is that the first part is a three-year phase;
the second is a two-year phase. If you have delays in funding
there is a season in which you work and the whole thing can be
delayed and so on. There is an expectation. We do not know what
is going to happen. Is it just going to be two years when you
do this work and then move on? If this is a critical democratic
building block for the future development of the country in which
men and women are involved there needs to be some further assurance
that this money will be available.
Chairman: We might want to pursue that.
Q84 Ann McKechin: In my local community
a delay of 10 months in the provision of money for infrastructure
would not be unusual. I wonder whether it is just about people's
expectation of what they think local government is when they see
it simply as a funding agency and one in which at the moment there
is no infrastructure for collecting revenue from local people,
so there is a degree of responsibility and rights within the relationship
with local government at one level. If they simply see it as a
grant-making body and something to take from is that perhaps setting
the wrong incentive and culture within local communities?
Mr Page: We are doing all sorts
of things to encourage local empowerment. The NSP programme is
one in which money is being made available for infrastructure
improvements.
Q85 Ann McKechin: Should it not be
a two-way process in that people contribute to it as well?
Mr Page: One has situations where
the local community is expected to make contributions, for example
to building or irrigation, whether it is labour or whatever. It
is not simply a matter of handing out money. This has been the
system and also the expectation. Obviously, it must be reinforced
by the kinds of things that a lot of NGOs are doing, for example
by encouraging self-help groups. It has proved to be a very useful
initiative, particularly for women. To see the way in which women
are now managing some of these projects is extremely encouraging.
Q86 Hugh Bayley: I turn to the Counter-Narcotics
Trust Fund. Mr Page, you said some pretty harsh things about the
fund. In your evidence you say that you have applied to the trust
fund for resources and have been told to rewrite your proposal
five times and you still have not received clear answers about
whether or not you will get funding. What do you believe is the
problem, and what is your prescription for changing it?
Mr Page: I think David Mansfield
may well be right that there is been a lack of clarity about what
is being attempted with the fund. The rules have changed quite
dramatically since the beginning. I think that in April 2006 we
applied for money from this fund and that was at a time when DFID
funding for some of the work we were doing—integrated rural
development in Badakhshan—was coming to an end. We were
certainly encouraged by DFID to think that perhaps this might
be a source of funding for continuing that important work. A new
government fund had been set up and we might be able to get something
through that.
Q87 Hugh Bayley: What are you bidding
for? What does the Afghanaid project seek?
Mr Page: Basically, we provide
a range of different interventions in Badakhshan to improve wheat
varieties and help to increase productivity. We have a veterinary
service for the villages with which we work. We provide women's
resource centres. We have a child rights programme and also a
micro-finance programme. We are involved in self-help groups.
Q88 Hugh Bayley: Broadly, you are
saying that DFID and the EU have withdrawn funding for these programmes
of work and you made a bid to the trust fund for a continuation
of funding.
Mr Page: It was not exactly a
continuation.
Q89 Hugh Bayley: It was for the next
phase of this kind of work.
Mr Page: Yes. Badakhshan is one
of the five major poppy-growing areas in the country and this
is the Counter-Narcotics Trust Fund. We were providing a range
of interventions, if you like, in an attempt to help farmers develop
alternative livelihoods or encourage them to increase their productivity
and economic situation. We were led to hope that this fund might
be a source of assistance for that. We approached it first through
the agriculture ministry, which we were encouraged to do. That
took a long time. When it got to the counter-narcotics ministry
we went to the bottom of the queue. The counter-narcotics ministry
then decided that all these projects should be tendered, so they
had to be neutralised and made less specific. We are not really
sure why it has taken the turn it has, but 18 months later we
still do not know whether our proposal has been accepted.
Q90 Hugh Bayley: My briefing note
says that about $19 million has been allocated or pledged to the
fund and about $3 million has been distributed. Can you remember
what the value of your bid was?
Mr Page: I think we were asking
for something like $4 million in Badakhshan and Ghowr provinces
for work in that area.
Q91 Hugh Bayley: You state in your
paper that the intellectual property that you have in your way
of working would be put at risk if there was a tendering process.
It seems to me that you need to find some way to reconcile good
practice with public money on the one hand and the way NGOs work
on the other. I entirely understand the frustration if you are
told two years into the process that the rules are being changed
and they now want tendering rather than grant application, but
why is tendering a bad idea for NGOs?
Mr Page: There is no problem with
tendering. If they want to have a tendering process and they want
to do some counter-narcotic work in Badakhshan let us have a tendering
process; as many NGOs as wish can tender, but to ask people to
apply through the agriculture ministry or other ministry for this
fund and then tell them that the ground rules have changed completely
does not seem to be a very sensible way of proceeding, particularly
when we put forward a proposal that is based on our knowledge
of that particular area. There are ministries in Afghanistan that
work well and one should not knock them as a whole. The MRRD and
education ministries have done extremely good work. It just appears
that the counter-narcotics ministry, for whatever reason—there
are other stakeholders as well, the DFID is one and UNDP is another—has
not been able to develop a clear process for this.
Q92 Hugh Bayley: What is the role
of UNDP in the trust fund?
Mr Page: I am not entirely sure
of the precise role, but it is involved in managing the thing.
DFID is the main donor and then the counter-narcotics ministry
has the final say in looking at these things.
Q93 Hugh Bayley: We certainly saw
a variable level of engagement, competence and corruption between
different government departments, but it seems to me that the
difficulty is that you face bureaucratic problems dealing with
government ministries. The implication is that the funders, DFID
and others, should really be managing ways through these processes.
Mr Page: Obviously, donors are
involved in assisting and advising a lot of these ministries and
that is the way the situation works. Our hope is that some greater
clarity can be brought to this so this money is not simply locked
up, because it is money that could be used for these purposes.
Therefore, there is a degree of frustration. We do not say that
we shall necessarily be successful, but to have a system where
there is no decision and no clarity seems to be very unfortunate.
Ms Winter: Under this tendering
process the problem would be that the programmes devised by Afghanaid
based on its experience and abilities would then be tendered at
a lower rate by an organisation that did not know how to run them.
That was the fear. As to who runs the trust, it is administered
by UNDP. DFID will tell you that it has done its utmost to try
to get the bureaucracy to work. Somebody new was appointed in
the summer to UNDP to get the thing right and to get it working
because DFID's view was that that was where the money should come
from for NGOs to do the rural development programmes that are
so badly needed. I talked to that person in the summer and she
told me that the plan was to evaluate the CNTF, where it was at
and what it had already disbursed. There was an argument going
on because DFID felt that it should disburse the money and then
evaluate it. There was one bureaucratic hurdle after another,
plus lack of clarity in the mission, as it were, on the part of
all stakeholders involved in it. The upshot is that the money
has basically not been disbursed and everybody is waiting around
for it. It needs to be sorted out.
Q94 Ann McKechin: We have talked
about the national trust fund the bulk of which I understand is
used to pay public sector salaries of teachers, nurses and doctors.
You have also spoken about problems occasioned by the capacity
of individual government departments and some are doing much better
than others. Can you point to some examples of best practice where
you think the donors have been assisting the capacity of departments?
Other departments seem to be bedevilled by issues regarding corruption.
Does that require a political rather than funding change?
Ms Winter: I think that political
change and pressure need to be brought to bear so there is real
capacity development and that the levels of corruption are dealt
with. Those ministries that have good ministers in them are the
ones that attract the support of development funding et cetera
and they are the ones that are able to use it. You have the haves
and have-nots. That was very clearly illustrated when the Minister
of Rural Rehabilitation and Development moved over to education
and money moved with him, as it were. That is something that needs
to be looked at. Those ministries that are functioning well are
the ones to which we have already referred: rural development,
education and health. Not surprisingly, they are the ones that
value and use NGOs in a very sensible way. For example, in the
health ministry NGOs are involved very much in planning policy
and implementation, looking to future programmes and so on. That
works well. As to education, it was NGOs that provided the services
by and large, particularly the Swedish Committee. It has handed
over its schools wholesale to the Ministry of Education but retained
a certain number that it is working with as model schools, particularly
in terms of girls' education and so on. There is a very good working
relationship between the ministries and money, therefore, does
get to the NGOs. We need to evaluate what has already been done,
because these are examples of good practice, and try to use them
particularly with the Ministry of Agriculture and Ministry of
Higher Education. Another issue has been lack of capacity because
people did not receive education even to secondary, let alone
tertiary, level, and that is being perpetuated. Non-formal education
is also an area that needs to be looked at.
Q95 Ann McKechin: In Mazar-e Sharif
we met a woman who was working with an NGO. She was a teacher
by profession. I was very disappointed that an NGO should appoint
a teacher given the vast shortage of members of that profession
in state facilities. The point made repeatedly is that NGOs have
been recruiting away from government the best quality staff and
in many cases entrenching the problems rather than dealing with
them.
Ms Winter: There will be odd cases
where you have people who are appointed to jobs in areas that
are not within their technical competence. One gets examples of
that whether one looks at the UN or the Government of Afghanistan.
There are also examples of NGOs having very good engineering departments,
of which Afghanaid is one. The Government then scooped all of
them up into the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development
because it needed engineers; it sucked all of them from the NGO
system. It works both ways.
Q96 Ann McKechin: Ten thousand are
working with the United Nations. That is a very high number.
Ms Winter: Some of them are specialists
in rural development and they work as drivers and interpreters.
It is a major issue. Another problem is that government departments
pay very low salaries. In ministries where they know their way
around the international system they will do top up, which means
that they can attract people.
Q97 Ann McKechin: You recognise that
there is a problem in that the NGO community does not appear to
have a co-ordinated approach to tackle this. It is taking people
away from the state sector at a time when it lacks enormous amounts
of capacity.
Ms Winter: I will give you another
example where I believe it is largely refuted. I would like to
see the evidence, but certainly NGOs get the blame for things
like this. More than any other institutions in Afghanistan NGOs
have built the capacity of government officials. For example,
when Ashraf Ghani and other ministers came in they took people
wholesale from the NGO sector to work in the Government. I was
asked whom they should approach. Several ministers—some
are still in their jobs—came out of the NGO field. They
did not come from higher education elsewhere or the Afghan system
but from NGOs that had worked for years in Peshawar and Afghanistan.
It is very easy—all of us probably do it from time to time—to
blame another sector for doing things, but I would like to see
the evidence. I would be very surprised if it is true that NGOs
are taking the best people. Having said that, at the end of the
day if you are an Afghan with some education who wants to look
after your family, plus rebuild your country, you will try to
make that contribution where you feel it will be most effective.
Q98 Ann McKechin: It would certainly
be helpful if the NGOs kept accurate statistics which were readily
available to the Afghan Government and Parliament so it could
assess the level of the problem.
Ms Winter: Readily available statistics
on what?
Q99 Ann McKechin: I am referring
to statistics in terms of whom you are recruiting, what the academic
qualifications are, how long they stay with you and what salaries
you pay, so we can have an accurate analysis, because it seems
to me the major problem is that the Afghan Government has very
little control over a lot of areas about which you would expect
any other government to know.
Mr Page: I totally sympathise
with your concern that the Afghan Government should become more
effective; we all want to see that, but as far as NGOs are concerned
I do not believe we are seeing a huge increase in staff at the
moment. It is not as if we are recruiting enormous numbers of
people. For example, the staffing of Afghanaid has been fairly
stable for the past three or four years. There is a tremendous
capacity in NGOs which the Afghan Government itself recognises,
in the sense that when it comes to implementing the NSP it decides
that it needs to have NGO support to do it. The whole of the NSP
programme and setting up of all 23,000 CDCs across the whole of
Afghanistan has been done by NGOs. It is the skill of the NGOs
that has made this possible. I agree that there is an issue about
comparative salaries.
26 Overseas Development Institute (ODI) Back
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