European Commission allocates nearly a quarter of a billion euro in humanitarian aid to vulnerable people in Africa
Posted, March 06, 2009 @ 12:00
€247 million of tax payers' money has been allocated in humanitarian aid to Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Chad, Burundi, Tanzania, the Sahel region, Uganda, Kenya and Zimbabwe.
Nirj Deva, MEP, Conservative spokesman for international development in the European Parliament, said today:
"We must be able to monitor precisely where this money goes. Many of these countries are in clear need of humanitarian aid but are also at risk of great corruption.
"EU money should be ring-fenced for specific projects whose progress can be clearly monitored. When such large sums are involved transparency must above all be upheld - too much of the money we send to help impoverished people ends up in the wrong pockets.
"We should be focussing on outputs not inputs. Not just talking about how much money we are giving but about what we are getting for our money. In six months time the EU should be telling us precisely what our money has been spent on - how many people have been fed, how many tents have been erected, how many wells have been dug, how many vaccinations been given, how many displaced people re-housed.
"In these times we all need to know that we are getting value for money, when there is less available we need to know it is being spent efficiently."