As much as NT$300 million (US$9.5 million) of the total money donated to Typhoon Morakot relief funds set up by the government and non-governmental organizations has been “re-donated” to others instead of being put into direct use to help storm survivors.
According to information released by the Ministry of the Interior (MOI), a total of 74 government agencies and non-governmental organizations have received a total of NT$23.3 billion in their Typhoon Morakot relief accounts.
The ministry marked 50 percent of the total amount of donation as “used.” However, as much as NT$300 million of the money marked as “used” was actually forwarded from one donation recipient to another.
Entities including Keelung, Taoyuan County, Yilan County, Penghu County and Changhua County governments, as well as Nantou County’s Jhongliao (中寮) and Yuchih (魚池) township offices, have “re-donated” all or most of the donation money they have received.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) forwarded all NT$91 million in donations to the ministry, the Pacific SOGO Social Welfare Foundation sent NT$1.1 million of the NT$1.5 million it received to the Department of Social Affairs of Taipei City, which was not a Morakot disaster zone.
Some of the money was forwarded more than once. A charity group in Keelung donated all NT$100,000 in donations it collected to the Keelung City Government’s Typhoon Morakot relief account.
The city government then forwarded all donations it received to the ministry.
The ministry’s statistics show that more than a dozen groups have donated the funds they received, totaling up to at least NT$300 million.
Green Party Taiwan secretary-general Chang Hung-lin (張宏林) urged the Control Yuan to launch a probe into the issue.
He said the ministry should ask groups calling for donations to publicize their fundraising plans and penalize those groups that do not execute them, as well as put them on a blacklist to prevent them from raising more donations in the future.
The Red Cross Society of the Republic of China, on the other hand, thinks that forwarding donations is not a bad thing, because it could help amass love from different places and people, it said.
Although the United Way said it also believes that the transfer of donations is not a bad thing if a group is incapable of properly using the money, it said such an act could amount to breaking promises made to donors.
Taiwan NPO Self-Regulation Alliance spokesman Cheng Hsin-chen (鄭信真) agreed.
“People donate money because they believe in you and so when you transfer the donation to others, it’s a breach of trust,” Cheng said.
“The ministry should do something about it,” Cheng added.
Alliance for Fair Tax Reform convener Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋) said that many groups may have decided to give the donation money away as the ministry is following up on the donations a year after Morakot.
Wang questioned if the ministry would also follow up on the funds after the transfer and if the donors agreed to the transfer.
Given that many groups did not designate the use of the donations when they gave the money to other organizations, “how would they answer to the donors about what happened to the money?” Wang asked.
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