Critics and proposals of NGOs not obtaining grant in 2009 financial competition must be grounded: Chairman of Council for State Support to NGOs

"I consider that the differences are natural. Dissatisfied non-governmental organizations make both grounded and ungrounded accusations. We would like the criticism and proposals to be grounded. This will have appropriate impact on our work," said the Chairman of the Council Azay Guliyev during debates, organized by the Union of Journalists of New Generation, Azerbaijan Media Center and Caucasus Media Center.

During the 2009 financial competition, the Council received projects from 569 NGOs. Of them, 212 participated in 2008 competition, and 357 NGOs presented their projects for the first time. According to the results of competition, 226 projects were approved, and 1.848 million manat will be provided for them.

In 2008 365 organizations presented projects to the Council, and 190 won in the competition.

Some NGOs say that the financial competition was held in a non-transparent manner. Therefore, the Union of Journalists of New Generation, Azerbaijan Media Center and Caucasus Media Center organized debates today.

All grounded proposals will be considered, said Guliyev, and dissatisfied NGOs will be involved in future activity of the Council.

"We will carry out serious work in order to change the position of NGOs, which selected the way of blackmail, slander," said Guliyev. He said that even if the Council's decisions were not ideal, experts expressed opinion on them.

"Experts estimated projects, and this is their subjective opinion. Therefore, there can be subjective opinion in the estimation," Chairman of Council said. Guliyev mentioned the possibility for dissatisfied NGOs to make appeal complaints and emphasized that they will be considered objectively.

Attending the debates, the Chairman of the League of Democratic Journalists Yadigar Mammadli said that there is no transparency in Council's activity. "Projects were estimated at three stages. But community is not informed of the results of these stages," said Mammadli.

/Trend News/