Most of the 291 private voluntary organisations recently deregistered by the Registrar of Private Voluntary Organisations had not bothered to submit their annual returns as required by the Private Voluntary Organisations Act, Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare Minister Professor Paul Mavima has said.
These returns and, for those raising money from donors for
their work, audited financial statements are required so that everything is
above board, genuine PVOs are able to continue doing their needed and valuable
work, and vulnerable communities are not manipulated by self-seekers after
donor funds.
Prof Mavima said the PVOs were deregistered for varying
reasons, chief among them being departing from the mandate on which they were
registered, failure to submit audited financials as per the dictates of the law
and annual reports of their work.
“The reasons for deregistration vary from one organisation
to another, but basically most of them failed to submit the needed annual
returns as mandated by the Act,” said Prof Mavima.
“Typically, you will find that on rare occasions there are
issues of national security, but those are very rare.
“The main problem was people biting off more than they
could chew.
“People just register but they do not deliver on their
mandate, and also some cannot keep up with the requirements for reporting, and
therefore they end up being deregistered.”
“For example, they say they want to provide services to
vulnerable people, maybe children, maybe elderly people. They bring brilliant
ideas, but on implementation they find that they cannot get the resources that
are needed and they cannot keep with the requirements.
“That is to say bring the report on an annual basis, bring
audited financial statements. As a result they fail to comply, let alone to
deliver on the mandate so they end up being deregistered because they have not
fulfilled the requirements for registration,” said Professor Mavima.
In an earlier statement, the registrar of the PVOs
announced the cancellation of the certificates of the delisted organisations
for not complying with what the Act required. The reports are not onerous, but
include the need to list all executive or committee members and detail any
financial transactions. Some organisations quietly collapse during the year and
the degregistration simply removes these from the lists.
“The Registrar of Private Voluntary Organisations in
conjunction with the Private Voluntary Organisation Board has noted with
concern that a number of registered private voluntary organisations are not
complying with the prescribed expectations of their operations, as outlined in
terms of the Private Voluntary Organisation Act (Chapter 17:05),” said the
statement.
“Accordingly, the Registrar of Private Voluntary
Organisations and the Private Voluntary Organisation Board have therefore
deregistered 291 organisations that were found to be non-compliant with the
provisions of the Private Voluntary
Organisation Act.”
The organisations were asked to go to the office of the
Registrar of Private Voluntary Organisations and surrender their certificates.
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