From: magazine ‘Gram’,
Gemeentereiniging en Afvalmanagement
(City
Cleaning and Wast Management – a magazine for town halls and other government
offices)
The worldwide organisation Humana is
in discredit. Dutch town halls and clothes gathering companies are asking
themselves what to do about Humana Holland.
Zaanstad has already taken a decision.
This town hall ended the contract with the clothes gatherer. ‘We have
serious doubts because of the storyie about Humana’. Director Frans Jacobs
from KICI ( a foundation of charities for clothes gathering) doesn’t know what
will happen next. The founding of the
so-called organisation Charityfour (People in Need, Humana, The Salvation
Army and KICI) has been put on the long run.
Because of the bad image of Humana.
By Hetty Dekkers
The intention was that the four charities which gather clothes, The
Salvation Army, KICI, People in Need and Humana to get to work together in one
foundation, Charityfour. Because of logistic advantages and saving on costs.
‘Now in one city often two trucks drive behind each other to empty the boxex
of the own organisation’, says Jacobs.
In the mean time Humana has gotten in discredit. The worldwide
organisation, originally from Denmark, is said not to use the money from the
clothes gathering for development aid, but for its own purpose. The press
nowadays falls over the organisation and also politicians have not one good word
for Humana. P. van Heemst, member of parliament for the PvdA, says in an article
published in several newspapers, such as Eindhovens Dagblad and Utrechts
Nieuwsblad: ‘I advise town halls to end the cooperation with Humana. Humana is
a money machine under the cover of development aid for the third world.’
The town hall of Zaanstad has, as far as known up till now as the only
one, followed this advice.
Envirenment-adviser J. Hoogendijk of this town hall is careful in his reaction.
‘It was a wish of the politicians’, he answers at the question why Zaanstad
has ended the contract with Humana. ‘Ít has nothing to do with the quality of
the clothes gathering. That was good.’
Also the town hall of Eindhoven, where are forty Humana-boxes to be
found, says to have no complaints on the service of Humana.
According to a spokeswoman Eindhoven doesn’t want to end the
relationship with Humana. ‘Or there must be going on something within the town
hall that I do not know about’, she says.
According to Jacobs it isn’t clear yet what will happen with the
founding of the foundation Charityfour. ‘It has been posponed till further
notice. We are going to talk with The Salvation Army and People in Need to
decide what we have to do.’ Jacobs fur sure isn’t all too glad with the bad
publicity about ‘partner’ Humana. ‘This negative image also comes back to
us. We are being compared with Humana. And that absoluteley is not correct. We
are four, independant organisations which only wanted to work together to
combine our strengths.’ Besides that according to Jacobs for an organisation
such as KICI it is not always easy to control whether a partner is reliable or
not.’ Humana Holland did get the quality mark from the Central Bureau for
Fundraising. How can that be, one can wonder. Personally I think it would make a
lot of difference if Humana Holland, with which we are confronted, would take
distance from the worldwide mother-company.’
Louise van Deth, co-director of the CBF, answers on the question why
Humana Holland got the quality mark: ‘The negative publicity is about the
international organisation. We only looked at Humana Holland and this
organisation is keeping up with all demands we have.’ For a quality mark CBF
looks at the way the board is organised (‘whether it is independant and
properly organised’) and if the
incomes from the clothes gathering are being spendt according to the year
accountants. ‘And that was the case with Humana’, Van Deth says. ‘We
didn’t find anything wrong. The incomes from Humana Holland are going to
development projects in Africa, as far as we have been able to ascertain.’
Humana Holland, despite our asking for several times, didn’t want to
give any reaction on this article.