So after the Conservative’s pop at DfID and my previous post on the subject comes the news that the Department for International (note that international) Development has approved a £2.4 million grant to the Trade Union Congress (TUC), which is obviously based here in the UK.
The money has been awarded under a Partnership Programme Arrangement, or PPA, which is a system of funding existing charities that have a track record in International development.
The main funding is not tied purely to international development though with one of the aims being to carry out “activities to build support for development in the United Kingdom that are likely to contribute to a reduction in poverty in other countries.”
It appears that their memorandum of understanding is purposefully vague and in true DFID style requires no deliverables. So the activities are “likely” to contribute to a reduction in poverty, not “will” contribute.
Other objectives include raising the capacity of foreign trade unions to enforce workers’ rights (no complaint there) and “Great British trade union membership, understanding of a commitment to sustainable development” and “strengthened UK and developing country trade union international development policy”. The last two of which should obviously be read as spending the aid budget on our friends in the UK.
A report by the International Policy Network which examines the TUC’s relatinship with DfID, A closer Union, has also pointed out that the TUC has to date receieved a total of £3.6 million with earlier payments being intended to raise awareness within teh British union movement for International Development issues. now £3.6 million is a lot of money in international development. In fact it is nearly enough money to provide half of the population of Gambia with a free malaria bed net.
The IPN’s report has raised an ugly specter in the international aid market, that few people know about. Mainly that international aid from organisations like DfID and USAID is supposed to be spent at home not abroad. DfID prefers to use UK based consultants and organisations as opposed to locally based ones in order to ensure that UK tax payers money is spent in the UK and I have been told that USAID actually stipulates that all contractors and consultants should be from the US.
The problem here is that the TUC (well its members) is obviously an enormous contributor to the Labour party, and that although DfID funds almost certainly didn’t end up going into Labour party coffers directly they would have indirectly. How? Well any budget for a specific project such as those mentioned above will have an element of overall running costs built into it, the cost of office space, heating, lighting, IT, admin etc, that obviously actually contributes to the running of the whole organisation. So as a result of this “free money” the TUC ultimately can afford to give more to the Labour Party.
Showing posts with label DFID. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DFID. Show all posts
Friday, January 15, 2010
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Shaking up DFID
Andrew Mitchell the Shadow International Development Secretary has said that an incoming Tory government would radically shake up DFID (The Department for International Development), which I have to say is a fantastic thing.
One of the judicial reform projects I've been working on in Nigeria was originally DFID funded, DFID have sunk a huge amount of money into a project that from its inception has never worked and rewarded contracts to companies who have failed to deliver time and time again. They've also totally failed to spot that the real issue in the project has been local capacity of staff not technology. The situation has in fact got so bad with the project that the Lagos State government have decided to effectively forgo ongoing DFID funding and selected their own suppliers and will be self funding the project moving forward.
Some of the key areas that Andrew Mitchell has said he will be looking at is inviting in outsiders to review projects and funding, transforming the kind of work it does and how it operates (more business focused or even civil service focused over it's current NGO style) and carrying out proper reviews not just of spending but out outputs.
If any of this had been happening then I'm sure that the project I'm working on would not be in the state it's in, so a review and radical shake-up of DFID's work can only be a good thing
One of the judicial reform projects I've been working on in Nigeria was originally DFID funded, DFID have sunk a huge amount of money into a project that from its inception has never worked and rewarded contracts to companies who have failed to deliver time and time again. They've also totally failed to spot that the real issue in the project has been local capacity of staff not technology. The situation has in fact got so bad with the project that the Lagos State government have decided to effectively forgo ongoing DFID funding and selected their own suppliers and will be self funding the project moving forward.
Some of the key areas that Andrew Mitchell has said he will be looking at is inviting in outsiders to review projects and funding, transforming the kind of work it does and how it operates (more business focused or even civil service focused over it's current NGO style) and carrying out proper reviews not just of spending but out outputs.
If any of this had been happening then I'm sure that the project I'm working on would not be in the state it's in, so a review and radical shake-up of DFID's work can only be a good thing
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