The Social Welfare Council has said it will come down hard on INGOs which have violated rules that govern what they are supposed to spend their budget on. A 15-member taskforce has been set up by the SWC to investigate, regulate, and punish international non-profits operating in Nepal that it says "show a lack of transparency". The member-secretary of SWC Rabindra Kumar said the taskforce would begin acting immediately, inspecting the activities of INGOs, while inspections of NGOs would follow later.

"There have been problems with NGOs all along," he said, "but now even bilateral and multilateral donors have been found flouting the law. We have been asking these organisations for progress reports but a majority of them have never responded, so we decided to take action."

Although 207 INGOs have been registered with the SWC, it claims that a majority of them have not been responsive and have not sent it required regular reports. The Council's director, Madan Prasad Rimal, says there are no records of how much money they brought into the country and what they spent it on. Rimal says the INGOs are flouting rules which require them to spend 80 per cent of their budget on an approved field of work.

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