Massive fraud hits tsunami aid

April 17th, 2006 · No Comments· 8 views

It’s the Brits that have complaints, but I imagine most aid agencies will agree.

Times
Banda Aceh was ground zero in the tsunami of Boxing Day 2004, which claimed more than 200,000 lives across the Indian Ocean. More people died here than anywhere else.

Now two charities that raised unprecedented sums in Britain have fallen victim to rip-offs that ruined their efforts to house the survivors and have forced them to suspend key projects.

Save the Children and Oxfam were both targeted by unscrupulous building contractors who took their money, only to build structures so flimsy that a new wave would wash them away.

Save the Children may have to write off more than £400,000 worth of building contracts. Oxfam, which counts its losses in “tens of thousands of pounds”, has stopped its construction work around Banda Aceh until investigators establish the extent of the abuse.

Go read the article then come back.

A couple of mistakes on the part of the Brits leap out. First, they seem to have made little effort to inspect the projects they funded during the construction. And, secondly, they seem to have been trying to run the projects from London.

You gotta be on site. You gotta get dirty. That’s what prevents a lot of corruption. As well known and respected as Save the Children and Oxfam are, they appear to have just thrown money at Indonesia rather than investing in people working on scene.

Yes, I think this is happening a lot. It’s a mindset in the international aid community that keeps far too many of them in their nice, air conditioned offices in civilized countries while they wire aid money to the disaster and pat themselves on the back.

I would also wager that the same problems are not happening with the religious-based aid programs. Oh, they’re paying corrupt locals for the right to be there and provide aid, but they aren’t losing anywhere near as much because they are on the spot, watching and in many cases doing some or all of the work.