Federal Minister for Social Welfare and Special Education Zubaida Jalal on Friday said the government is intended to introduce new laws for NGOs to improve their performance as well as protecting the sector from being misused.
Speaking as chief guest at a seminar held here on Friday on "National Consultation on Bringing Best Practices in the NGO Sector", she said NGOs are an important segment of society through which countless numbers of unheard and unseen people have organised themselves to identify their needs, develop skills and find solutions to their problems. The seminar had been organised by the Ministry of Social Welfare in collaboration with Charity Commission for England and Wales and Social Welfare Department Balochistan.
"Today's event is part of my Ministry's initiative to hold consultation with NGOs and NGOs Regulators so that a mutually agreed Code of Conduct or Ethics could be devised to enable both the NGOs and Regulators to work under a defined mechanism", she said.
Zubaida Jalal said they held consultations with NGOs in Islamabad, Sindh, Punjab, NWFP, Northern Areas, Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Tribal Areas and with today's event in Quetta the first round of the consultation would be completed.
"The number of voluntary organisations in Pakistan is about 100,000. The massive size of NGOs, fragmented registration and regulatory mechanism, multiple registration options and the capacity issues of the Regulators have many pitfalls", she said.
The weakness of the whole system includes low compliance on transparency and accountability, no sharing of registration details amongst the provinces and the different authorities at various tiers and above all the non-existence of performance assessment mechanism, she maintained. The minister added that it leaves an open field for post-registration abuse by the NGOs which fraught the risk to national security.
"This potential misuse can not be averted through legislation unless the sector itself is committed to adopt the best practices", she said and added that the government needs to take effective measures to establish conducive environment for the sector.
She, however, observed that the sector is expected to promote the highest standards of transparency and self-regulation as the government would never wish to let the sector sink under the weight of heavy legislation.