In Cambodia, too much aid slips under the net

Glenda Korporaal January 19, 2008
http://www.theaustralian.com.au

SITTING in a roadside cafe in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh, Australian Chris Minko is grabbing the glasses and the salt and pepper shakers, moving them around the cheap laminated table top to make his point.
Minko, who has lived in Cambodia for the past 11 years, is furious about the waste, mismanagement and even corruption in the world aid dollars he sees spent in places such as Cambodia, a country struggling to get on its feet after decades of political unrest, including the genocide of almost 2 million people in the late 1970s by the Pol Pot regime.
Cigarette in hand, he uses the objects on the table to show how well-meant aid money often flows from one well-heeled organisation to another, all with different vested interests, many of them overlapping and with different agendas, all taking their cut along the aid trail, with only a fraction of the original amount flowing to the people it is meant to help.
Minko sees it all first-hand in Phnom Penh, one of the great charity and non-government organisation capitals of the world, where many hundreds of NGOs are based; a city where beggars scuttle along streets full of the latest shiny sport utility vehicles.
The Co-operation Committee for Cambodia's latest agency guide lists more than 600 local and international NGOs in a country of about 14 million people. "The amount of money being made here by Westerners is horrifying," Minko says bluntly. "And it is all so patronising and arrogant."
He argues too much Australian aid money is inefficiently used as it moves from aid agency to aid agency, each taking its administrative cut to fund its expatriate staff's houses, maids, four-wheel-drives and children's expensive education, plus its overseas head offices.
He would like nothing more than to make his point with the new Labor Government in Canberra, which has promised to boost Australian aid from its present $3.2 billion a year.
"There are excellent AusAID initiatives for landmine survivors in Cambodia, you can't deny that,' he says. "But I have watched the abuse of Australian taxpayers' funds and other aid funding here in Cambodia," he says. "We need to draw attention to this middle-man structure, to the fact that a lot of Australian funds go to funding other foreign NGOs when they should be going directly to Cambodian NGOs.
"Often by the time the money goes through the different tiers of NGOs there isn't much left when it hits the local level."
Minko knows that his outspokenness has probably cost him some financial support for his own project in Cambodia. Since arriving here with Australian Volunteers International, he has been a driving force in setting up the Cambodian National Volleyball League for the Disabled, for Cambodians who have lost limbs as a result of landmine accidents.
The volleyball league, which operates on a tiny budget, provides a small but supportive sports outlet for a fraction of the country's 40,000 landmine victims.
Started in 2002 with eight teams, the CNVLD now has 16 teams involving some 350 athletes in a competition which runs from May to October, and which also organises wheelchair racing for the disabled.
The league's latest success was hosting the sport's World Cup in the Cambodian capital in December (the first ever World Cup staged in the country) where the home team came in a very creditable third after Germany and Slovakia.
Minko is particularly proud to be involved in a low-budget organisation audited by KPMG (with no cars or villas) which has won a UN best practice award for its operation. Unlike many other organisations, it relies heavily on local staff and works in co-operation with the government while avoiding, he insists, the usual corruption traps.
His program is backed by the ANZ Bank in Cambodia which provided support for the organisation of the World Cup last month.
Minko aims to leverage the success of the volleyball league to set up an Association of Southeast Asian Nations' centre for disabled sports in Phnom Penh and to get his Cambodian team (which can beat the country's able-bodied athletes at volleyball) to the world No 1 ranking.
He has the support of the Cambodian government, including offers of land for a new multisport centre in Phnom Penh, which he believes can be built for about $5 million. He argues corporate sponsorship will be one of the ways of the future for his organisation.
But as the new government in Canberra looks at stepping up the national aid budget, having criticised the Howard government for being too stingy, there is a need to make sure overseas aid is spent efficiently and effectively.
Minko says the corporate sector can play its part by ensuring the charities and NGOs it supports are well run and professionally audited with a focus on controlling administrative costs and delivering services and outcomes.
He has already ruffled feathers in the aid industry which he argues is a closed shop to people like himself who are interested in providing practical help to people in places such as Cambodia but who are not players in the international game.
As Australia looks to boost its aid budget, paying attention to some critical comments from well-informed outsiders could have far more practical impact than listening to the do-gooding rants of another grandstanding rock star.
korporaalg@ theaustralian.com.au