Location: Outside the hotel meeting room in Jinja, Uganda where Nile originated.

Scene: I organised a workshop for an NGO’s finance managers from Africa wide offices. Between sessions, I sat outside the meeting-room while I noticed that cars (almost all of them are four wheel drive) are entering the hotel, dropping passengers and leaving. Occupants of these cars are well of people that is visible immediately from their appearance, cloth and over weight. While, checking with one of my colleagues, I was confirmed that all of them work in NGOs or some kind of development projects. While all these people are meeting inside air-conditioned room, the life outside the hotel are very different – bare footed people carrying their skinny bodies with a sign of long walk.

My Thinking: I continued chatting with my colleague and we all know that they are the people with the best paid jobs the country. I found that there is a direct correlation between country’s level of poverty and pay level in international NGOs. For example, someone working in international NGOs are likely to be paid ten times of their counterpart in local government. This is something like if a homelessness charity in London pays its outreach worker £ 150,000/year and this person drive a Bently car.

International NGOs operating in third world countries always argued to appoint people with unsustainable salary structure. This has just attracted an army of NGO workers those mainly come from English/French speaking privileged class in that country. While they live in that country but far away form the reality of the poor’s life. This immediately makes average person suspicious about NGOs objective. I have yet to find an international NGOs that their financing structure survived after they left.

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