Disgraceful Donations

NEPAL’S health institutions still lack a great deal of sophisticated equipment that are omnipresent in such institutions in the developed world. Many health institutions run by the government thus look for donations of such equipment from international agencies working in the field of improving health services in the developing world. Equipping hospitals and centres with a crucial diagnostic or a treatment machinery means a great difference to the service that these institutions provide. The news about this or that donor agency gifting this or that machinery to a health service organisation is a familiar one. But a news piece the other day that many of such machineries, often gifted amidst much fanfare, are useless equipment comes as a shocker. A high official at the Ministry of Health was quoted as saying that these outdated, out-of-order equipment were donated by international non-government agencies solely for the purpose of getting them out of the developed countries where getting rid of these obsolete machineries was a costly affair. It was more convenient to dump them on developing countries like Nepal, while in the bargain a lot of goodwill was also earned.

This is a pure scandal. It certainly does not seem like the case of looking gift horse in the mouth. The list of such obsolete equipment runs long. An X-ray processor, an auto-clap and a dialysis reagent donated to Sahid Gangalal National Heart Centre don’t work. MRI mammography machine at the Teaching Hospital in Maharajgunj is useless. So are city-scanning machine at the Koshi Zonal Hospital and an X-ray machine at Gandaki Zonal Hospital. ADRA Nepal, the agency that donated these equipment, is in the dock. It however claims that the machines were in good condition when they were donated, implying that they fell into useless conditions only later. It is true that Nepalese health institutions are generally notorious in maintenance aspects, be it a building or a machine. But the list of what concerned health authorities call useless equipment, donated to not one but several institutions, is just too long and specific not to wonder whether there is something fishy. Part of the blame for all this must lie with the Ministry of Health which has the job of granting permission to bring those machines into Nepal. Clearly, lack of vigilance at that point is partially responsible for this. But no less amount of blame should be shared by the recipients as well. Why weren’t the apparatuses tested by these beneficiaries before they were accepted with open arms? The first thing to do for the Ministry of Health now in this respect is to carry out an investigation into these disgraceful donations and come up with general set of safeguards to save Nepalese health institutions from being used as a dumping site for useless pieces of metals from the developed world

People’s Participation

BARELY four decades have elapsed ever since Nepal forged development partnership with countries from abroad. Going by the past four decades of development experience, Nepal has achieved substantially in different social and economic sectors. There has been reasonable progress in the building of roads, hydropower development, agriculture promotion including the installation of the required infrastructure for telecommunications. All projects have been carried out through grants or loans from donor countries. The mindset of the Nepalese at large has been such that development should always come from outside. If only we could rise above this feeling of over dependence on the donors then the development scenario could certainly be different than what it is at the moment. It would be quite imbecile to rule out foreign assistance given the stark reality that Nepal glaringly lacks resources. But at the same time, we should do a bit of soul searching and redefine for whom is the development endeavour being made. Development should be for the people and by the people. Provided this feeling is infused among the Nepalese, we could have better results. The remarkable accomplishments of the Dhankuta District Development Committee (DDC) in the development front could be cited as an example of peoples’ participation in bringing about development of their choice. The DDC through the mobilisation of local resources has built roads within the district that have facilitated the movement of goods and people. The success of the rural road project has in turn brought about a genuine feeling among the people of Dhankuta that development is something which should come from within and not necessarily from outside. Apart from constructing roads covering short distances linking different key locations of the district, the DDC has mobilised the local people to construct play grounds, parks and other rough roads that have proved pivotal in enhancing the economic activities in the district. To sum up, the credit of the success goes to the devolution of power to the DDCs by the Local Self Governance Act. Now the glaring question is when the people from Dhankuta can do so much through their own initiative why can’t other districts emulate the same. Provided that all the 75 DDCs are inspired by the notion of ‘development by the people for the people’ then our dependence on the donors would decrease. This in turn would help us to address our problems, which we can better comprehend than the donors.