Editorial
Green Crescent tale
Where was the oversight before?
AS the Green Crescent story unfolds, a number of irregularities have come to light in the functioning of the UK-based NGO in an upazila of Bhola district. Obviously, the recent unearthing of a mini ammunition factory at a madrasa-cum-orphanage set up by Green Crescent has triggered a plethora of questions and queries regarding the real objectives of the controversial NGO. The elaborate structure was, it is suspected, used for some clandestine training purposes as pointed to by the seizure of cache of combat-grade weapons and jehadi literature.
A probe by the Bhola district administration has revealed that the organisation did not even obtain the permission for running the madrassa and illegally extended its activities to another upazila. The organisers were out to exploit the religious sentiments of people by engaging in philanthropic activities which nobody could object to. The ploy worked until the law enforcers raided the madrassa building and found materials proving that something very different was going on inside it.
Developments like the ones witnessed in Bhola tend to indicate how vulnerable we remain to proliferation of organisations with some hidden agenda. For example, it still seems pretty easy to get registered as a welfare organisation and use it for carrying out activities having nothing to do with social welfare as such. It appears, there is no centralised authority to approve or reject any proposals for setting up 'welfare' organisations; for, the Bhola one was registered with the local welfare department. It seems also, there is a duality of authority between the NGO bureau and the social welfare department, or perhaps, a conceptual overlapping of it.
Furthermore, as far as the welfare bodies go, there is hardly any mechanism for monitoring the functioning of such organisations once set up. In the Bhola case, the organisers did not even bother to submit its charter to the local welfare department nor did the latter care to see whether the set-up was acting beyond its stated purpose or keeping within it.
It is imperative that use of religious institutions for any malevolent purpose is prevented by the government energetically. The danger here is perhaps much greater than we can conceive right now. So, we have to contain the menace before it becomes too big to handle.
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