Expressing serious anger over the absence of Federal Minister for Planning and Development Khusro Bakhtiar, Senate Functional Committee on Problems of Less Developed Areas on Thursday decided to lodge a written complaint with the chairman Senate over the behaviour of ministers.
The committee meeting held here with Senator Usman Khan Kakar in the chair to have a briefing on the nature and work of a non-governmental organisation (NGO) namely Trust for Voluntary Organisations (TVO).
The officials said that the TVO since its inception has spent Rs 1.27 billion through 1,204 NGOs on 1,422 projects with primary aim to provide funding to the NGO working to uplift the backward and underdeveloped areas.
Additional Secretary Economic Division, Zulifqar Haider and TVO officials briefing the panel said that the TVO was created as a non-political autonomous body with a mandate to provide support to the NGOs operating in Pakistan in 1990 when Pakistan banned USAID. It serves as a catalyst for indigenous NGOs engaged in participatory development-oriented programmes. The TVO advocates development with equal opportunities for all segments of the society.
The purpose was to aid them in the development process and develop a mechanism for strengthening the contribution of NGOs towards a broader goal of improving the quality of life of the neglected segments of Pakistani population. The bottom-up working of NGOs meant that they could reach the people who most need help and the funds would reach those who need them the most. The TVO was constituted as the agency to carry out the objectives of the SDF through the provision of grants, technical assistance and training for NGOs. The trust became fully functional in 1992.
A 12-member Board of Directors governs the affairs of TVO. The Board consists of two ex-officio members i.e. representatives of the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Economic Affairs Division. Also included in the board are 10 individuals from the private sector who have distinguished themselves in any field of endeavour. The Board is a policymaking institution and also approves funding for projects.
The panel was further informed that since 2014 the organisation has been operating without a board, and since 2014 various summaries have been sent to the government to constitute the board but as yet no approval is made.
The organisation initiated 159 different projects since 2008 which benefited 330,000 people in various parts of the country, while 4,000 people were provided with training in various fields also.
The chairman committee said that the offices of the organisation are operating in cities like Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad while it was established for the uplift of the backward areas. The committee asked the officials to provide details of the completed projects of the entity. Kakkar said that 95 percent of the natural resources are in backward areas of the country which are badly ignored and budget of the organisation was spent on the already developed regions.
The committee also directed the concerned department to reconstitute the board of directors of the TVO as early as possible and in next meeting details of all the utilised funds should be shared with the committee. The panel also asked the officials to provide the details of the donors.
In order to facilitate funding of small cases, the Board's activities have been decentralised by the formation of the regional committees (RCs) of the Board at Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad.
In order to extend its outreach to the NGOs of less developed and remote areas, the Trust has set up 09 regional offices at Quetta, Karachi, Hyderabad, Larkana, Multan, Lahore, Peshawar, Dera Ismail Khan, and Muzaffarabad (AJK). TVO has also created a network of over 326 partner NGOs/CBOs (one each in rural and semi-urban tehsil of Pakistan) to make its operations more effective. This network will act as TVO's main instrument of socio-economic development, capacity building initiatives, and dissemination of information at the grassroots level.
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