AGAINST CHARITY

AGAINST CHARITIES

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Every year, especially around the Christmas time, I get constantly hit-up by solicitors askingme to donate to charity. The requests come from every direction.

When people aren’t knocking on my door with their hat in hand, then the requests come bymail, flyers, e-Mails, on the television/radio and the most annoying of all by my employers!

It’s not just the professional solicitors either. People often approach me in parking lots,outside supermarkets or just in the town, looking for a handout.

Hardly a day goes by without someone asking me for money.

I’m a widowed professional maybe with a bit more disposable income than the averageBritish (or other national) citizen. However, I have never been able to justify paying onepenny to charity.

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You may consider me to be a cheapskate and accuse me of being a scrooge, but I havemore than a few good reasons why I don’t give to charity:

1. I already indirectly contribute to charity through my taxes. My National Insurance, incometaxes, poll tax, council tax, VAT, fuel tax, sales, property, registration, and other taxes arealready taking away close to half of my income every year. Much of this money; is‘supposedly’ spent by the government on welfare for the poor, disaster relief, parks andnature, the arts, and other forms of charity, so I’m indirectly donating heavily to almostevery charitable cause now.

2. Over time, charity contributions add up. Over a 40-year plus career that amountssomewhere between ¼ to ½ a million, assuming I earn a six percent return. Until myretirement savings are fully funded, donating to charity could ultimately be harmful to myfinancial health.

3. Charity promotes dependency. When I give money to a beggar, there is little motivationfor him to improve his situation.

4. The money I donate to charity may not be wisely spent. How do I know the homeless guyasking me for a handout isn’t going to take the money I give him to buy booze and drugs?Even with professional charitable organizations, how much revenue is wasted on bloatedoverhead and salaries for their administrators?

5. I’m not the only one who doesn’t donate to charity. Apparently one in four people don’tgive at all. Ironically, according to national statistics, bleeding-heart liberals actually donatethe least; conservatives donate 30 percent more money - on average.

6. Charity won’t necessarily be there when I’m in need. Sorry, but I don’t buy the argumentthat if I give my money away, someone else will be there to pick up the tab when I’m inneed. I say it’s better to rely on my own cash when I encounter a rainy day.

7. It makes more sense to donate my time instead. Why should I slave away at my job allday, just to give what’s left of my hard-earned money to someone else to do the charitywork I care about? It is a lot more efficient to volunteer my time, especially when it’s a causeI am passionate about.

8. I won’t be rewarded in the afterlife for making charitable donations. Besides, if my onlymotive for giving was getting to heaven, I’m sure God would see right through my falsesincerity.

Of course, there are exceptions. If you are fortunate enough to have more money than youcan possibly spend, please give it away to those who need it.

However, for the rest of us stuck with under funded retirement and/or kids’ college accounts,or wallowing in debt with huge mortgages and/or credit card balances, it just doesn’t makeany sense to risk our teetering finances any further.

Naturally some will argue, “Taxes are not charity. Taxes are the price you pay for living inthe UK, and other European/North American/Australasian countries. You use those services:

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you drive on publicly-funded roads and/or take public transportation; you had the option tobe educated for free for over 10 years; you are given protection from criminals andterrorists.”

This is a straw man argument. It’s the entitlements that are the issue and the biggest part ofour deficit.

I will definitely never give financially to any charity again. In the past, I’ve given to homelesson the streets, I gave a job to a guy who would have been homeless otherwise, and allowedhim to sleep in the office for two years. I gave to local charities during my expatriate (BritishNational Living Abroad) days and even took part in charity drives for the local GymkhanaClub, Rotary Circle, Knees Up Mother Brown Societies to mention a few – But Never Again!

When I had to evacuate from Biafra, Angola and Mozambique, no one was there to help me,I had to help myself and after loosing everything I held dear to me on three occasional I hadto re-build my life from nothing and never received a penny of charity or from thegovernment I pay taxes too!

Only recently I was at the local Supermarket and a young 24 year old (my estimation) fromformer East Bloc lady and her 5 kids were literally itemizing every single item on where shecould have gotten it cheaper and then have them mark it down. Left with a cart as full as itcould handle, and then whipped out her Barclaycard to pay. I just felt sick. I’ve been workingand paying taxes over 40 years, had four personal tragedies, three of which left me nearlypenniless and the one job one I’ve got now barely makes enough to cover my rent, no wife,no kids, no joy in life, yet I’m supposed to feel sorry and support help support a family of fivekids.

Women won’t even date me now because I don’t have money to go out on dates, and abunch of moralistic people want to label me a scrooge. If you can’t live within your means,you don’t have the right to ask others to support you. No one; and I mean no one willsupport me, I have to earn every penny I make, and the argument of giving to others isIMHO – Total Bull Shit (for a better usage of words)

Never again, not one thin penny, even if I win the lottery. I won’t feel guilty at all, because Idon’t have kids and a wife, I’m supposed to support the rest of the world that does. Thievesand theft of services is what I call it. The number one reason for poverty in this country issingle mothers, the second; all the freebies given out by the government to people not reallyentitled to the services, but just to look in the world give my taxes freely away to theinternational scrounger.

I studied labour economics and that’s the truth. Want to be poor, have children, and want tobe really poor have 5 children. I didn’t get the pleasure of making them, and I sure as hellwon’t be guilt tripped into supporting them. The church and all charities can go to hell!

I remember a few years back when there was a television documentary depicted tears, highdrama and hyperventilation as the precious group braved plunging temperatures, insects andaltitude sickness. Just how hard a gig could it be, I had asked in a column, when you wereflown in and out of Tanzania by private jet, and

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For two of the participants, the singers Alesha Dixon supported by 120 porters and twodoctors? And Ronan Keating, the Kilimanjaro jaunt coincided with the release of new singles.It was less a question of raising money to buy mosquito nets for the continent’s sufferingchildren than of net sales for themselves, I quipped. The reader was unimpressed: “If it’s soeasy, why don’t you have a go?”

This ‘multi-millionaire celebrities had portable chemical loos with flush; when I did myKilimanjaro trek I had a plastic drum with ancient wooden seat. Feel morally superior toCheryl already.

“Giving to Charity” is another Myth we uphold fervently in the Great American and/or BritishReligion (just like “own a home”, or “send your kids to college”). Its time we stop blindlybelieving in mythology. I’m not saying don’t give. I’m not saying don’t be spiritual or don’t begood. But do it with thoughtfulness, with true spirit, with a true desire to help More harmthan good is done when you blindly throw money at most charities.

When my first version of this article came out (How to be a Superhero…or why I would neverdonate to a major charity) I got a lot of criticism. So I’m going to answer some of thecriticisms/questions that arose back then and I look forward to any comments, furthersuggestions.

(The whatever Religion trying to take your hard-earned money)1. Be a Micro charity. What I like to do is direct donation into what I call “micro-causes”. Specifically, pick up the local paper and see who needs help RIGHT NOW where asmall amount of money can immediately make a significant difference in someone’s life.

In other words, be directly, personally involved with your cause. Then you know how thepennies are being used, you know face to face who is being helped, you feel good, you solvean immediate problem, you save a life. You go from being an average guy to a superhero.For the next nine reasons I give specifics why I avoid the major charities.

2. I already donate to thousands of major charities. When you pay taxes, agood portion of the tax budget goes towards funding philanthropic causes. I have no controlover that money. Nor is that money always correctly allocated. So much corruption (not onlyin our government but in majority of others) has siphoned off that money.

Nor do I always approve of the charities being donated to but I have no choice over it (otherthan a single vote out of 100,000,000). But that’s fine. I can use #1 above to balance thatoff. I do have to say, though, that some of those charities the government has funded haveworked. We eradicated smallpox throughout the world for instance. I feel pretty good aboutthat. So if I can use my pennies to make more money for myself, and then pay more taxes, Idon’t think it’s a bad thing.

(While cancer rates rising, its harder than ever to get drugs approved by medical controllers)3. I don’t like paying administrative overhead. For instance, for every poundthat one donates to the Cancer Society, 9.8 cents goes to administrative costs. I’m happythat people have jobs and are hired and I have nothing against the people that work for theCS. But I bet if I use that money to start my own company (or, again, directly help people

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through my own micro-charity), then more people will have jobs and more people will gettheir problems solved. And the CS is probably one of the best-run major charities out there.

4. I don’t like paying marketing costs. I didn’t realize this until I looked it up.But for every pound I give to the Cancer Society, 21.8 cents of that goes towards furtheringtheir marketing efforts. I thought I just gave them money? Now they need more moneyalready? So only 70 cents of my pound goes to actually helping the families with cancer.

5. There are better ways to cure cancer. First off, it seems like I’m picking onthe Cancer Society. But this is the number one killer in the UK & United States and one of thebiggest killers out there so I might as well focus on it a little bit. And it is not just cancer.What I’m about to say applies to Alzheimer’s, Heart Disease, Cancer, and every majordisease. Companies cure cancer. Scientists with new ideas of drugs team up withbusinessmen, start little companies, get approximately UK£ 200million to UK£ 1billion infunding, then develop their drugs, put the drugs through a bunch of different phrasesthrough the medical approval agency, and then finally if the drugs are good, they get boughtby a bigger company who is better at selling the drug.

That’s how cancer gets cured. That’s how every disease in the world finds a cure now.

So the best way to cure a major disease at least is to put money into a biotech mutual fund,which funds small biotech companies. These companies are at the frontier of major biotechresearch. The other thing is to lobby the government to reduce the medical approval agencystringent standards on drugs. A drug costs up to UK£200 million or more to get through themedical approval board. The only way companies can recoup that cost is by chargingenormous amounts for drugs. This is part of the reason why healthcare and insurance are soexpensive. Drugs for prostate cancer, for instance, cost up to UK£93,000 a month becausethe billion or so it cost to get through the Medical Drug Administration.

6. It’s hard to uncover charity fraud. The recent 60 Minutes expose on GregMortenson’s charity for building schools in Afghanistan is a good example. I don’t know if thisis a fraud or not. We may never know the full story. I don’t want to know. But if it takes 60Minutes to uncover something, using the best reporters out there, then how am I going topossibly be able to find out what’s fraud and what’s not.

(In our feverish desire to help the Japanese, hundreds of frauds took advantage)7. Charities are businesses. Businesses have agendas. The agenda of acharity is to convince you of a cause so that you feel concerned enough about it that youdonate to that charity. Example: there are many charities that try to do something aboutglobal warming. However, there is a lot of mixed evidence of global warming (this is not adebate about that but the recent scandals among scientist emails in UK are enough evidenceto suggest that people often misstate the facts in order to promote agendas).

If people stopped donating to these charities, even if all the evidence suggests that theircause is meaningless, a lot of jobs would be lost. A lot of lives (the families of the peopleholding those jobs) would be hurt. That’s sad. But it’s not your responsibility to help them.Many charities have causes that are unclear at best. So it is best to avoid them.

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8. High Unemployment. With every pound that I don’t save, I have two choices.Donate to a charity, or spend it. A charity is only obligated to spend a very small amount peryear on actual charitable activity. The rest goes into funds that generate interest. They spendoff of the interest. When I spend a pound in the economy, it instantly has its effect on jobs,growth, etc, particularly because of the “multiplier effect” (e.g. I buy a sandwich in a deli,the deli guy uses the pound to buy a chair, the chair guy buys some books, the books guybuys a house, etc. So each pound spent is the equivalent of UK£10 spent on the economy.That has immediate effect in the quality of our lives: lower unemployment, greater demandfor products, homes etc.

9) Smart Allocations of Capital are on the case. Bill Gates and Warren Buffetare a 1000 times better than I am at researching charitable cases, allocating their capital,investing correctly the leftover funds, etc. My UK£100 (or UK£1000, or UK£10,000, whatever)is not going to make a dent in their UK£100 billion. Let them handle the big problems. Withthe micro-charity idea (I personally can make a great difference to people who Bill Gates willnever even hear about.

(Everyone can be a superhero)10. Give in every way you can possibly give. Spend your time and efforts onproper giving. Too often, giving to charities is a way to pass on the personal givingresponsibility to someone else. “I gave at the office”. Give and You Will Receive. Its one ofmy first posts here and I truly believe and try to live by it.

Giving of ourselves is the most important thing we can do in our lives, and the more yougive, the more benefits you will. So don’t give in order to receive those benefits, but give andthen enjoy the benefits that will shower down. But the more personal the giving is, thegreater the benefit.

Don’t think you should give OR help the poor, unless it benefits you. I don't understandwhat logical reason someone would have for doing anything that didn't benefit him or her.

Why You Should Never Give to the PoorAnd having said all that above I still will not give to charities or the poor!

Hard to swallow isn’t it? But before you burn me at the stake, allow me to present my beliefsin the form of a story.

A number of years ago a humanitarian organization went to Africa intending to alleviate painand suffering. The group came upon a village (in a region I will not recall, but it was inTanzania) that suffered from an atrocious lack of sanitation services. There was no cleandrinking water or sewage disposal. Children played freely in the stream of sewage that ranthrough the centre of the village. Infectious disease claimed the lives of many villagers eachmonth. Clearly, the people of this village needed help.

The humanitarian group, in accordance with their mission, set to rectify the situation. Theypaid many thousands of pounds to contractors to come to the village and build a modernwater purification and waste disposal system. The contractors came, did their work, and

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within a few weeks the village was given a solution to their problems. The people had cleanwater, any trace of sewage disappeared, and the rate of disease decreased dramatically.

The humanitarian group commended themselves on a job well done (or so they believed),and left to give charity elsewhere while the villagers lived on happily ever after.

But the story does not end here. For a while the humanitarians had given the villagersa great gift, but they had not solved their problems.

Several months later, another humanitarian group came upon the village.

They had heard about the great gift bestowed by the previous group, and wanted to see theeffects of charity first hand. Much to their surprise, they found the village more squalid thanever. Once more children wallowed in sewage. Once more disease plagued the people. Asbefore there was no clean water or sanitation to be found.

But how could this be true? The modern sanitation and water purification systems installedshould have lasted for decades. Yet, in only a few months they had fallen into disrepair. Thewater stations were filthy and misused. A great act of charity had been for nothing!

The humanitarians, puzzled by the situation, sought the chief of the village, and asked himwhy his people had wasted such a gift. This was his reply.

“How can you blame us? We are simple people who know nothing of modern machinery. Theothers came and bestowed it upon us, and it was a great relief. But after they left, thingsbegan to break down. We do not possess the knowledge to repair these problems, and theresult is before you.”That may be true, said the humanitarians, but what about the water stations? They haveclearly been abused. Have you not the common sense to protect your own assets?

At this the chief looked at them cockeyed and replied.“And what did you expect? These people had been many years without clean water. Thenyou gave it to them for free in abundance. They took all they could use and more. Thepeople did not work for those water stations. They do not own them, and they could not bepersuaded to maintain them.”

The humanitarians were silent. The chief had spoken truth. The great gift alone had notbeen enough and the reasons could be clearly observed.

Perhaps, it is human nature to abuse a gift. The humanitarians returned to their camp andthought long and hard about how they could help the villagers.

The next day the humanitarians returned, determined to rebuild the water and sanitationsystems with the following conditions.

1. The villagers would have to pay for water and sanitation. Not more than they couldafford, but there would be no gift giving this time.

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2. A group of villagers would work with the contractors to build the system and would betaught how to repair every aspect of it. These villagers would in turn train others sothe system would never fall into disrepair.

With these new conditions in place, the water and sanitation systems were stored. This timethe people had respect for the systems because they owned them. This time they were ableto repair the system when it broke down. To this day the villagers have plenty of clean waterand live free of filth and disease.

I thus I recall one very important saying. “Never give to the poor”.

Ways to give to charity without donating moneyPeople are still giving money to charity – a survey by Foresters shows 90% donated cash in2011 – but times are tough, and increasing numbers of people are preferring to find otherways to help others.

Foresters found that 57% of those questioned like to donate old items to their local charityshop, while 43% prefer to volunteer their time. But if you have already ransacked your homefor goods to donate, you may find inspiration in this list of ways you can support otherpeople.

1. Give bloodMost people between the age of 17 and 65 can give blood, with men able to donate everythree months and women every four. The most time-consuming part is finding your localdonor centre and setting up an appointment; actually pumping out a pint of the red stuff cantake as little as 10 minutes.

If you are prepared to commit more time and have good veins you could donate yourplatelets, which are required by patients having chemotherapy or organ transplants, and bythose who suffer blood disorders or life threatening bleeds during an operation. Your blood isfiltered through a cell separator machine to remove the platelets and then returned to yourbody. This takes about 90 minutes and you can donate up to 15 times a year.

2. Sign up to the British Bone Marrow RegistryTo join the British Bone Marrow register you need to be between 18 and 49 years old andalready be a blood donor. Ask to have your blood checked for tissue type the next time yougo to give blood – patients and donors are matched by comparing white blood cells for tissuetype. Donations may be given to sufferers of leukaemia, aplastic anaemia and other diseasesof the immune system.

If you are a match there are two ways to donate. The easiest involves having an injection forfour consecutive days to boost the number of stem cells in your blood, which are thenfiltered out by a cell separator machine. The second way, donating bone marrow itself fromyour hips, is done using a needle and syringe while you are under general anaesthetic. Thisinvolves staying in hospital for two days and a recovery period of five days at home.

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Alternatively, you can contact charity Anthony Nolan and register by providing a sample inthe free spit kit it sends you. It is particularly keen on recruiting young men aged 18-30, asthey are most likely to be chosen as donors yet account for just 12% of the register.

3. Register as an organ donorNo one needs their organs when they're dead, yet only 29% of us have joined the register.Carry an organ donor card in your wallet and make sure your nearest and dearest knowabout your intentions, and which bits you are happy to give up.

4. Raise puppies for Guide Dogs for the BlindEach puppy lives with a volunteer from six weeks of age until it is 12 to 14 months old. Theaim is to produce a well-behaved, friendly and responsive dog ready for training. Thevolunteer teaches him basic obedience – sit, stay, come, and walking on a lead – and getsthe puppy accustomed to different environments such as town centres, country lanes andpublic transport. Basic equipment, vets bills and food costs are covered by the charity, withthe hardest part undoubtedly handing back the puppy for specialist training.

5. VoteSeveral mutual organisations donate money to charity if you, as a member, take part in theirannual general meeting. NFU Mutual, for example, is donating 50p to Make-A-WishFoundation UK for each proxy form completed online, and 25p for each proxy form returnedby post, up to a maximum of £30,000. In 2011, members' votes resulted in a donation of£26,000, at no cost to themselves. So if you belong to a building society, friendly society ormutual insurer don't just bin the AGM pack.

6. Record books for the blind and visually impairedThis is one for professional actors, broadcasters and others who have been trained in voicework.

The audio book charity Calibre uses more than 80 volunteer readers to record books that arenot available commercially. The recording is done in your own home, but Calibre will provideall the necessary equipment and training.

7. Help an older person with their gardeningMowing the lawn, weeding and pruning can be impossible for someone who has balance ormobility problems, so don your wellies and help them out. At the same time as tidying theirgarden you will be providing company for the person you are helping. Contact your local AgeUK partner to discuss the options.

8. Learn to lip read or to communicate in British Sign LanguageThe charity Action on Hearing Loss, This charity has drop-in centres and holds events for the10 million people in the UK who are deaf or have a hearing loss, and a spokesman says it isan advantage for volunteers to lip read or sign. It could also help you assess whether youhave an aptitude and want to go for further paid-for training through the charity.

9. Donate your not-so-old PC or MacComputers for Charities has recycled more than 250,000 computer systems and distributedthem to 105 countries, but legislation requires that to qualify for recycling the equipment

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must be less than five years old and in full working order. The charity protects donors frompotential data fraud by removing the hard drives.

10. Eat curry and save tigersOK, this involves spending money, but if you are going out for a curry you might as well behelping one of the world's rarest and most beautiful species. During Save the Bengal Tigerweek (14-17 May) more than 500 Indian restaurants around the country will serve a three-course meal for £20, of which 25% will go towards protecting the estimated 500 tigersbelieved to still survive in the Sundabans, a wild area of mangroves on the border of Indiaand Bangladesh.

I have worked on placement over many years at various Charity Organizations (especially inAfrica) and have experienced at first hands how ruthless the company and/or organizationswas in terms of generating money, and realised that it is just like any other profit-basedcompany (although you could argue their cause is for good) - fact about these charities arethat they are also a profit organisation.

The amount of money that would actually go to the intended cause varies, although they willmake profit unless it's stated as a 'non profit charity'. Otherwise if a big charity is reallysuccessful one year, the chances are some of the cash will go on their Christmas party

Everyone likes to imagine that their cash goes directly towards goats for villages or food forbabies or roofs for schools - and to be fair, it should and it does.

As with all things in this world though, charities also need to employ staff to keep thingsrunning, rent premises to work from and buy desks and paper and all sorts of very boringthings, which don't sound very charity like at all.

Without all this the charity really couldn't offer their services to those who need it.

The aim of the charity is to keep that balance right, to make sure that the running costs aremanageable and the service is being delivered to those who need it.

Unfortunately though, not all those who donate to charity can really appreciate that moneyneeds to be spent on both.

I lived in Africa for most of my life and believe me the word charity in some parts is a joke,well as far as some of the missionaries are concerned, but not all I have to admit. Someorganizations and private individuals are wonderful caring people and the most honest youcould ever meet and do a wonderful job helping people in need. But I'm afraid that somemissionaries, American in particular and others I've met certainly have a hefty cut of charitymoney first. They pay highest rents for the best properties in town, child minders gateguards more cooks and house staff than Royalty employs, first and business class flightsback and forth to the West with all the kids for holidays, crates and crates of beer for gardenparties, running expensive four by fours importing garden play things from the West for theirkids and plenty of nights out in expensive restaurants too. That’s where ‘some’ of the moneygoes because lets face it, they certainly don't pay for all that out of their own pockets. No! Itcomes from little old ladies paying into the church coffer box every Sunday morning. Andhow can it be right for any missionary no matter what nationality, to venture out into the

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village in four by fours wearing top label trainers on their feet when the poor people whothey're meant to help, have no money for food or shirt on their backs. I've seen it believe meand it's infuriating! I am very, very choosy which charity I put money into these days.

Likewise any employer who commands or demands that their employees should help them intheir named charity is also a dark area for me. If the Board of Directors, C.O.E, topmanagement want to donate, that’s fine with me, but don’t expect the minimum wagedemployees to do their dirty work for them just to get a positive image in the public eye.

Further perusal why charity is and has not worked any wonders in Africa.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8VXiQnXMLM

But then we all supposedly live in a free democratic world so do what you want with yourmoney and your life!

PANORAMA (BBC) ARTICLE FROM NOVEMBER 2008http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/7738297.stm

Over the last 50 years Western governments have paid out more than £400bn of tax payers'money in aid to Africa, but according to figures released by the World Bank this year, half ofsub-Saharan Africans still live in extreme poverty, a figure which has not changed since1981.

And though foreign aid has helped lift millions of Africans out ofpoverty by helping developing economies to grow, for thepoorest Africans little has changed.

In fact, the World Bank figures showed that Africa has been theleast successful region of the world in reducing poverty, withthe number of poor people in Africa doubling between 1981 and2005 from 200 million to 380 million.

So why isn't there more success to show for the billions ofpounds which have been spent? And why is it that all too oftenthe aid doesn't get through to the very people it is supposed to be helping?

Too distracted?In Addicted to Aid, award-winning Sierra Leonean reporter Sorious Samura, a man wellknown for asking difficult questions of Africa's leaders, examines these issues.

In Mulago's labour wardnewborns and their mothers lie on

the floor

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He asks whether we might have got it all wrong, and if wehave become distracted by arguments over how much moneyto give and paid too little attention to where it ends up.

Samura begins the programme in the Sierra Leone hospitalwhere he was born 45 years ago. There he meets Elizabeth, anew mother, whose son Joseph was delivered during a powerfailure after a difficult six days in labour.

For Joseph, who like his mother isHIV positive, the challengesof growing up in Sierra Leone have only just begun.

Bloody civil warSamura also visits his first school; the place where he says thepupils got their first lessons in corruption when the teachersbegan demanding bribes off their students in return for good grades after the governmentstopped paying them properly.

By 1977 the government of Sierra Leone had declarededucation a privilege and not a right, a situation, which Samurasays, helped radicalise his country's young people and in 1991led to the bloody decade-long civil war in which tens ofthousands died.

The war was brought to an end with the help of British troopsand since then Britain has spent £220m helping to rebuild SierraLeone's infrastructure.

But despite this ramped up aid effort, Samura reports that life in the country is harder thanwhen he was a young, with one in four children not making it to their fifth birthday and onein eight mothers dying in childbirth.

Empty classroomsOur reporter also travels to Uganda, which Western donors say is the success story ofdevelopment aid in Africa.

Clinics and schools have been built there in record numbers and today almost every Ugandanchild has a place in primary school.

They have poured muchmore into celebrity diseaseslike Aids and forgotten thatfor most Ugandans, they aresuffering from measles,from malaria, fromtuberculosis, from coughand from flu and they donot have drugs for thoseAndrew Mwenda

Pitfalls of an aid addictionYour programme comments

It was at this school thatSamura first saw corruption

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But according to a recent World Bank report, six out of tencannot read or write and when the bank's investigators madeunannounced visits to schools they found that over threequarters of teachers were not in the classroom when theyshould have been.

Gerard Mijasi Omalla, a teacher in a Kampala school, tellsPanorama that the low salaries that educators receive meanthat they have to take on other work to get by.

"We cannot sustain our children so we have to go and look foralternative jobs like in factories, selling fish, tomatoes, to mention but a few," Mr MijasiOmalla says.

Spot checksAccording to Mr Mijasi Omalla instead of spending money on building new schools andclassrooms, many of which lie vacant, it should have been used to pay the teachers neededto man them.

To find out if things are any better in the health system,Samura makes his own unannounced spot checks, accompaniedby Andrew Mwenda, editor of Uganda Independent and one ofa growing number of Africans questioning how aid is working.

At one clinic designed to serve 30,000 people, four of its fivebuildings lie abandoned and there is no medication for patientswho are suffering from malaria and bronchitis.

Mr Mwenda tells Panorama "donors' priorities are completelywrong".

"They have poured much more money into celebrity diseases like Aids and forgotten that formost Ugandans, they are suffering from measles, from malaria, from tuberculosis, fromcough and from flu and they do not have drugs for those," he says.

Blood-spattered floorsThis year alone the international community has given Uganda's healthcare sector over half abillion dollars, but a visit to Mulago Hospital in Kampala shows that not enough of the moneyis getting through.

The problem with theso-called development aidis that it is very difficult forthe European and Americanconsultants to understandthe problems of thesepeople

Dr Mohammed Barrie

In Sierra Leone one in fourchildren do not see theirfifth birthday

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Entering the hospital, where over 50% of the patients are HIVpositive, Samura is greeted by shocking scenes in which thesick and injured lie on the blood-spattered floor alongsidediscarded needles.

In the maternity ward, where about 80 babies are born everynight and about 20 caesarean operations carried out by onesurgeon in one operating theatre, newborn babies and theirmothers lie on the filthy floor surrounded by blood.

Staff at Mulago Hospital tells our reporter that they struggle to get even the most basicsupplies, such as gloves and the analgesic Paracetamol.

But a trip to the car park at Uganda's Ministry of Health shows that money is being a spent -just on other thing. The ministry has bought 1,800 4x4 vehicles for its staff, but only fourambulances for Mulago Hospital.

'Pockets lined'The Ugandan health ministry gave a statement to Panorama in which it defended itsspending on equipment and the working practices of Uganda's hard-pressed health workers.

It did admit that there is a problem with space in Mulago'slabour ward, but said that a new labour suite is beingconstructed to address this problem.

Mr Mwenda says that much of the money, which comes fromthe international donor community "lines the pockets of civilservants, high end health workers and politicians".

Samura meets Mike Mikula, one of three former Ugandan healthministers investigated over the alleged embezzlement of tens ofmillions of aid dollars.

Mr Mikula denies any wrongdoing, but admits that the ordinary citizens of Africa do pay aheavy price because of corruption in the continent.

Going hungryAs Samura reports, that is definitely true of Sierra Leone where he sees firsthand the sellingof stolen aid supplies.

The injured lay on the floorof Mulago's emergency ward

Mike Mikula was accused ofembezzling millions

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On sale in Freetown's pharmacies are mosquito nets andmedicines from Unicef and the World Health Organization.

These are supplied to the Government in Sierra Leone and aremeant to be handed out to the country's vulnerable children;free of charge.

Instead chemists, who know these life-saving medical suppliesand drugs are supposed to be free, sell them to parentsignorant of the fact, who often go hungry to buy them.

But Samura also visits Kono district where foreign aid money is being used to great effect ata clinic set up to treat some of many people who had limbs hacked off by the rebels duringthe civil war.

Personal experienceIn fact, the clinic is so successful that now only 10% of its patients are amputees andpatients are drawn from right across Kono district, and even from the neighbouring countryof Guinea.

The clinic is run by Dr Mohammed Barrie, who grew up in one of the poorest parts ofFreetown, Kroo Bay.

Dr Barrie says it is because of his youth spent in theshantytowns of Kroo Bay, that the clinic is such a success:

"The problem with the so-called development aid is that it isvery difficult for the European and American consultants tounderstand the problems of these people.

"I myself have lived in this place for a number of years duringhigh school. I went hungry many times so I do appreciate theproblems of these people and I do understand their needs," heexplains.

Medicines which should befree are on sale

Dr Barrie's clinic is such asuccess it even drawspatients from abroad

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