Ghani seeks accountability, transparency from NGOs

KABUL (Pajhwok): President Ashraf Ghani on Sunday stressed the need for making non-governmental organizations or NGOs accountable and sustainability and transparency in resources they spent.

Addressing a national “NGO Conference” here, the president criticized what he called fraudulent activities of some NGOs.

Ghani said NGOs activities in the past 17 years should be strictly scrutinized and during the process it should be identified that what amounts did they spent and what were their results and achievements and how should be positive activities further expanded

The president, addressing heads of NGOs, said: “In the past, you dealt with a government which never accepted corruption existed within its administration but the national unity government understands its problems and the way to resolve them.”

“We changed the spirit of decision making, our concentration is not to inherit the government but is to how to create institutions and strengthen them.”

Ghani said the generational change in the government should be understood as 49 percent of government Cabinet was less than 40 years old, the current administration was of “special characteristics.”

The president said: “We want investment not aid, aid through social program is a need but the ultimate target should be to convert Afghanistan to the place of investment.”

Economy Minister Mustafa Mastur termed NGOs as vital for people as they played a vital role in distribution of social services and added that there were good and bad NGOs which needed to be identified.

He stressed proper attention to “ineffective” role of NGOs in poverty alleviation and said the current state of poverty was over 39 percent and most poor people lived in rural areas.

nh/ma