Gov’t ceases operations of 10,000 NGOs

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT  | The government has directed more than 10,000 Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) to cease operations.

This follows a verification and validation exercise by Internal Affairs Ministry and National Bureau for NGOs. During the exercise 2, 118 Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) were cleared to continue operations after they were successfully validated out of a total of 14,207 registered NGOs.

The one month exercise that started in August and ended in September was aimed at creating a reliable data bank on all NGOs for evidence in decision making, to determine meaningful relations, correlation and variations data between NGO Bureau and districts to ascertain status of NGOs, and to produce a validate register of all NGOs.

According to Mario Obiga Kania the Minister of State for Internal Affairs of the 14,207 registered NGOs, only 2,118 were verified. 1, 635 are local NGOs, 254 foreign, 205 international, 7 regional and 17 continentals.

Kania, who was addressing a press conference on Wednesday at the Government Media Centre, said that the NGOs were only required to fill in a form for verification indicating their activities, their geographical area of operation, staffing structure among others.

He says companies and individuals like hotels, industries, and offices should stop dealing with any NGO as long as they are not in the list.

Obiga also called on district and sub-county NGO monitoring committees, Financial Intelligence Authority, Uganda Police, Banks and hotels should ensure that they do not transact with the NGOs.

The Interim Executive Director National Bureau of NGOs, Stephen Okello says that the aim of the validation was to get rid of dormant and non-existent NGOs.

He says they will be receiving complaints and concerns in regards to registration on a weekly basis and those who are aggrieved or want to be validated should come with their documents to National Bureau of NGOs.

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