The Daily Star - NGOs for disabled face crisis as government halts payments, cuts funding - April 15, 2011

By Maya Hamade

The Daily Star BEIRUT: A government funding crisis for the disabled will force nongovernmental organizations to scale back their services or close their doors in the next few months, according to institutions active in the field. The NGOs are complaining that the government has failed to provide them with funding for the last 10 months, and are objecting to a 20 percent cut in assistance for this year. Rafik Choueiri, the head of Kafaat, an NGO responsible for providing services to some 5,000 disabled individuals, made the announcement at a news conference Thursday, attended by dozens of children suffering from a range of disabilities. He said the government’s Auditing Department, responsible for approving ministry funding to the NGO, has frozen the annually renewable funding contract between NGOs and the Social Affairs Ministry. Choueiri said his group’s bills will be due in June, but ministry funding might still be frozen by then. “So we have a major catastrophe on our hands. Two thousand of the people we care for, and who are under contract with the government [as beneficiaries of services], will end up on the streets,” Choueiri told The Daily Star. According to Choueiri, the Auditing Department has been unable to validate this year’s contract because the Social Affairs Ministry can’t justify the list of costs by the NGOs. “The Social Affairs Ministry is supposed to conduct a yearly cost appraisal, after which they can provide an explanation for the required funding to the Auditing Department,” he said. “However, the ministry hasn’t conducted an appraisal since 2004 and so their information is outdated, and they have been paying these rates, and in some cases, much older ones, for the past several years … on the basis of such a lack of information, the Auditing Department has been unable to validate the contract and has recommended a 20 percent funding cut.” The caretaker minister, Salim Sayegh, is abroad and ministry officials were unable to comment on the issue. Dr. Mousa Charafeddine, who heads the National Association of Parents and Institutions for the Disabled, comprising 46 separate institutions responsible for the majority of Lebanon’s approximately 20,000 disabled citizens, confirmed the funding crisis. Before the financing freeze, ministry funds amounted to no more than 10-15 percent of the association’s needs, Charafeddine added. “After the appraisal in 2010 the ministry was paying LL11,000 per child per day, whereas one session of physiotherapy is LL20,000 per day, and every child has several sessions per day.” According to Choueiri the ministry has included, in the 2011 contract, an annex that permits these institutions to levy any required funds from the parents or relatives of the disabled. “But 95 percent of children who are born with disabilities are born into very poor families,” he said. “So if we need money, should we steal it from those who are already suffering?” Charafeddine said the ministry had also removed the names of disabled relatives of NGO staff from official government sponsorship. “So those who dedicate their lives to helping the disabled must now also come up with the funds to finance their families,” he said. At the news conference, Choueri read an open letter to President Michel Sleiman asking that the ministry be forced to pay its backlog of funding, conduct a cost appraisal for 2011, release the NGO’s frozen contracts, explain the details of costs to the Auditing Department so that the funding cut can be reversed, and cancel the annex allowing institutions to raise funds from family members. Families of the disabled say the government has fallen short of its duty. At the conference was Mohammad Souadi, with his 5-year-old son Jad, who suffers from West Syndrome, an epileptic disorder. “It is the government, not our kids who are disabled,” he said. “The state should assume its responsibility and not force us to sacrifice food and water to care for our children.”