Here is a challenge to the various INGOs to submit their annual budgets and expenses for the public to review. Show us the actual percentage of their budget that is spent on ridiculous salaries as out-of-country hires, the actual percentage of their budget spent on administrative expenses and the percentage actually applied to work within their presumed and target areas. Justify these hypocrisies in clear conscience.

Corruption can also be defined as the inappropriate use of funds, or the diversion of funds from their intended purposes and targets. In those terms, the institutionalised, self-regulating systems of the dominant INGO's in Nepal is most definitely corrupt.

Of course, the common claim is that the problem is with corrupt Nepalis. But who is more corrupt, the person who originally controls the money and inappropriately, unethically uses 80 percent of the original funds, or someone who might inappropriately, and equally unethically, use 20 percent of the remaining funds?

A common response, most likely on the minds of the aforementioned colonialists and parasites is that the excess in pay is required to bring in the 'experts' needed to fill these positions. The most important qualification for any of these positions is that the person is interested in the position for the right reasons (income, control, power and resume building are not among the right reasons here), that their heart is in it, that they truly believe in these efforts and that they have an understanding of Nepal.

Here some humble recommendations:

1 Reduce these absurd salaries. They are unjustified, unethical and breed dissension, disparity and, yes, corruption
2 Hire more Nepalis, and provide them with equal pay. This is after all their nation, their people and their problems: they understand a great deal more than 'experts'
3 Conduct a cost-benefit analysis of your much-publicised activities, and more importantly...
4 . . .connect this to an independent outside review, which you will respond to
5 Get out of the Kathmandu Valley and into the field.
6 Get involved within your Nepali community. I wonder how many of the expatriate community actually know their Nepali neighbours? Here's another open challenge: donate 10 percent of your absurd, unethical incomes or volunteer 10 percent of your time in small-scale local community development activities
7 Give credence to the hundreds of qualified volunteers working at the grassroots level throughout Nepal, not for a love of money or power, but out of a love for Nepal and a respect for humankind
8 Provide a forum for communication, advocacy, formulation, implementation and review between the untouchable volunteer community and the upper-caste policy makers of the INGO bureaucracy

It would be fairly instructive if the amount of total international aid Nepal has received were divided by the population. Compare this number to a Nepali's average yearly income.

Pete Heyn,
Kathmandu