21/02/2023
21/02/2023
The following text was mentioned on the “International Charitable Organization” website, under the item “Work Ethics and Professional Conduct Rules”:
The Organization works to maximize morals as one of the pillars of success and manifestations of progress and sophistication, and deals with the basic values of work ethics, and monitors the responsibilities of the Organization and workers in this field.
However, what we have seen of the strict ruling, issued recently by the Court of Cassation, imprisoning one of the most powerful members of the Board of Directors of the Organization for an unforgivable crime, and the confusion marred by the biography of other members of the Board of Directors, is not at all compatible with the above text.
After reading the merits of that ruling, which showed the number of violations committed by the former member, and other employees of the Board as a result of the weak oversight should have put their resignations at the disposal of the Minister of Endowments, so that he decides on them, because they are clerics with their reverence and their dignity does not confer upon them the robes of immunity from accountability Rather, their “moral” responsibility here is greater than others.
The violations committed caused great financial and moral losses to the reputation of an organization that is considered global by all standards.
I know very well, from my experience with the Kuwaiti Friendship Society, the extent of the effort exerted by the Ministry of Social Affairs in monitoring the activities of charity societies, and yet there are violations and transgression in many of them, and the size of the majority of them is not comparable to the size of the “International Islamic Charitable Organization”, and yet it is not subject to any effective supervision from any party, and almost no party knows the amount of money it has, nothing about its activities or its annual budgets due to its keenness to surround itself with a wall of secrecy.
The organization’s system states that it is subject to the oversight of the endowments ministry which is in need of oversight due to the number of violations it has been subject to for decades and its ministers have not stopped referring its leaders, from time to time, to the prosecution.
The principles of governance and the requirements of transparency, and logic before them, require the Board of Directors of the Islamic Charitable Organization to take sides with the right in its work, and to amend its articles of statute so as to make all its accounts and activities known, and subject to the oversight of the Audit Bureau, especially after the recent ruling of the Court of Cassation indicated that its funds, being in the rule of public funds, are automatically subject to the control of the authorities in Kuwait.
The board of directors of the charitable organization consists of 21 members, the majority of which are of the same trend and from nine Arab and Islamic countries, and Kuwait has the largest number of members.
It is logical to assume that the board oversight of the organization’s decisions is weak, especially when it appointed the head of the oversight body as a member of the board of directors, in flagrant violation of every law and custom, and yet no member objected to this illegal and imprudent situation?
In flagrant violation of every law and custom, and despite this, no member raised any objection to this illegal and imprudent situation!
With all its enormous material and moral capabilities, the organization was supposed to be the spearhead in providing a helping hand to the needy in Syria and Turkey, but we saw its president and his accompanying delegation asking for help from the office to send them a private plane that would bring them back home, away from the region most in need for their presence.
What more negligence and failure than this? Note that Istanbul Airport was and is still operating normally, far from the earthquake area.
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By Ahmad alsarraf