Dimapur, March 24 (EMN): Reacting to the Health and Family Welfare Minister’s reply against the questions put forth by Mhonlumo Kikon on payments to NGOs during the ongoing 12th NLA session, Access to Rights and Knowledge (ARK) Foundation has urged the Health Minister to get his facts corrected when he mentioned that there are 45 NGOs working on PL HIV & AIDS under NSACS, as reported in a local daily.
In a clarification, ARK Foundation cited that these 45 are not NGOs but number of Targeted Intervention (TI) Projects and that there are only 28 NGOs implementing 45 TI Projects across the state working with High Risk Groups (HRGs) of which the project Break up are 19 (IDU), 3 (IDU&OST),1 (Migrant), 1 (Truckers ), 15 (Core Composite), 3 (MSM), 2 (FSW) and 1 (FIDU) projects making it a total of 45 TI projects.On the issue of payments to these projects implementing NGOs, ARK Foundation reiterated, about the urgent need of releasing the backlog amount of Rs.3.23 crore for the period of Dec 2015 till January-March 2016.
Despite having signed an MOU of 100% with NSACS for the financial year 2015-16, the ARK said the NGOs are not provided the funds for the works they implemented during these four months, even after a lapse of almost a year.
It also stated that since the inception of this financial crunch, the NGOs has resorted to certain democratic means of registering their resentment by means of negotiation, wearing black ribbons, boycotting world AIDS day 2016, closure of the projects sites, non cooperation, and submitting of memorandum to the previous Chief Minister, spearheaded by NNagaDAO. However, ARK Foundation stated that such means of agitation has failed to seek the attention of the State Government in intervening the crises. The imbroglio still continues. And therefore, ARK said it is the legitimate right of NNagaDAO to demand 100% funds on behalf of the NGOs.
Further, ARK Foundation has also urged the Health Minister to immediately appoint a Project Director for NSACS, since the office is functioning without a project director for the past few months and also highlighted the need to urgently develop strategy/program for addressing Viral Hepatitis C in the state, as part of the state’s obligation to protect the health rights of its citizens.
