THE government plans to shut down altogether 2,931 NGOs in 16 districts of the country owing to what it considers their inactivity, absence of transparency in fund-related matters, faulty registration and alleged involvement with militancy. Obviously, if the charges levelled against these voluntary organisations are true or turn out to be true, the authorities would be right to think that a slapping of a ban on their activities is necessary. The clear feeling is that these bodies have violated the rules pertaining to their functioning through some or all of the activities noted above. In a number of instances, as reports suggest, they have also been engaged in questionable work in the guise of offering microcredit facilities to people.

There are quite a few thoughts that spring up relating to NGOs. An important one is that in Bangladesh, NGOs have generally played a very significant role in developing society and carrying it to a stage where people, especially at the lower economic levels, have found in them a means of emerging from their hard conditions and on to a respectable stage of survival. In such areas as primary education and health care, together with an empowerment of women, NGOs have complemented the work of the government in a promotion of social welfare. That is the unadulterated truth. And yet it is equally true that over the years a very large number of unscrupulous individuals have undermined the NGO concept through setting up their own NGOs, which eventually turned out to have been fake ones. At this point, there are many such individuals in trouble with the law for the cavalier manner in which they have set up and operated such so-called NGOs. So when the government decides to clamp down on the bad eggs in the NGO basket, we can only say that it is an act we cannot but endorse.

That brings us to the rather grave matter of a supervision of NGOs in Bangladesh. Quite clearly, there exist a multiplicity of government organisations where registering NGOs is concerned. That in turn leads to an overlapping of functions as well as general confusion, the result being that the government as a whole remains unaware of the actual situation on the NGO front. In a good number of instances, some of these organisations turn out to be mere skeletons of what they claim to be, with office bearers existing in name or most of them actually being members of a single family out to derive undue advantage from circumstances. Again, there is the critical question of how audit is done in the case of the NGOs. These shortcomings on the part of the authorities must be studied and rectified if a dark shadow is not to fall on the positive concept that non-governmental organisations have by and large symbolised.

Meanwhile, let the authorities keep the public posted on the action it takes against the 2,931 NGOs in question.