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Divided we fall
Mubin S Khan reveals the inside story of how the Savar-based Centre for the Rehabilitation of the Paralysed came to find its board of trustees engaged in a war of attrition and how Valerie Taylor, its founder, was sidelined
photo Al-Emrun Garjon
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The story of the centre for the rehabilitation of the paralysed is one of a modern-day miracle, and the woman who worked the miracle a modern-day saint. Started in 1979 with four patients in an abandoned warehouse of the Shaheed Suhrawardy Hospital, the CRP today sits on a 12-acre property in Savar, a sprawling premise which contains architecturally-rich buildings, a school for the paralysed, a basketball court, fountains, trees and bougainvillea trees as well as a lychee garden, which makes the place look more like an expensive spa than what it really is: a not-for-profit health care centre which is unique in the way it treats and rehabilitates paralysed men and women.
Valerie Taylor, an English woman who came to Dhaka for the first time in 1969 founded this institution and has virtually carried it on her shoulders for the last 28 years, helping it become what it is today. Today, CRP has a 100-bed specialised hospital for spinal cord injury, medical, surgical, diagnostic and telemedicine services, three different therapy units including physiotherapy, occupational therapy and speech and language therapy, and a paediatric unit.
The organisation also has income-generating activities like a metal workshop, a wood workshop, orthotics and prosthetics workshop, a special seating workshop and they also provide vocational training to their patients for their financial independence.
In recent times, CRP is embarking on a few more new projects which Valerie is very excited about. ‘We are trying to establish satellite spinal units all across the country where the state hospitals each give us ten beds where the nurses we train here can work regularly. Also, our first batch of speech and language therapists is in its third year and I am very excited about it because it will be a first time in Bangladesh,’ says the woman who is looked up to by most of the staff and patients at CRP as their saviour.
And yet, as recent media reports have revealed, Valerie may end up not being a part of the recent changes. On May 14, the Trust for the Rehabilitation of the Paralysed (TRP), which administers the centre, and of which Valerie is a member, met in her absence and decided to remove her from the central role of co-ordinator, keeping her on as an advisor. Valerie, her supporters in the CRP staff and trustee board, the beneficiaries and benefactors of CRP and finally, many who were aware of the outstanding philanthropic work that the centre does, were left shocked and enraged by this decision. At the heart of the controversy is the unpleasant truth that the board of trustees that oversees the centre’s policy and administration has become a house divided unto itself.
‘It is very easy for me to pack my bags and walk away,’ says Valerie. ‘Yet, my biggest fear is that the poor, the main beneficiaries of this organisation, will no longer be able afford the services here,’ she adds.
Valerie says she is frustrated by the recent events but has been overwhelmed by the support she has received so far from the people. ‘People have walked in and told me that I should not worry about anything and that they will take care of everything.’
Valerie also insists that the institute can generate income without depriving the poor of their services. ‘My first instinct is to provide anybody who walks in through those gates with what is required. They can pay back in instalments over time whatever they owe. Many beneficiaries of this institution have done that in the past,’ she says. ‘Also, once we take on schemes like renting out the floors of our Mirpur building our financial needs can be addressed further,’ she adds.
While many in civil society and the media have rightly reacted to the attack on Valerie’s position within the centre with anger and accusations against the trustees who decided to strip her of the post of coordinator, the story behind it is too complex to interpret in black and white.
In 2004, Friends of CRP (FCRP), a UK-based fund-raising NGO, which funds 22 per cent of the total annual expenditure of the centre, sent a letter to Valerie asking her to remove the then-Chief Executive Officer of CRP, Dr Momin from his post and replace him with a former, reputed, civil servant of Bangladesh, more recently, a former adviser to the Caretaker Government, C M Shafi Sami. The letter also asked her to include Shafi Sami and Leena Alam, a UK resident who is a member of the board of trustees at FCRP, as members of centre’s board of trustees. The request having arrived from one of their major donors, the changes were promptly taken, with Shafi Sami made a managing trustee.
New Age has been shown documentary evidence that at the time that centre had fallen into major financial disarray, with allegations of massive corruption in the construction of a building in Mirpur, built with donor funds to generate some income for the centre.
Shafi Sami seems to have been brought in to give CRP a more structured institutional look, like having an organogram, service rules, procurement policies, financial manual etc.
According to insiders, trouble began brewing between the new management and Valerie Taylor, who held the dual role of an advisor and coordinator, soon after the new members took over. In the beginning, the TRP employed an audit firm to audit the Mirpur construction in which two employees of the CRP, involved in the construction committee, were found responsible for most of the irregularities.
Valerie Taylor did not take well to the instant dismissal of two employees who had been with CRP for over 15 years. ‘They were not even given a chance to even defend themselves,’ she told New Age last week.
A major bone of contention, also, was the remuneration awarded to Shafi Sami for his services. In 2005 and 2006, in two installments, Shafi Sami received 22,000 pounds directly from FCRP. The contrast is stark for Valerie who draws a monthly salary of Tk 7,500. ‘CRP is an institution for the poor,’ says Valerie. ‘We cannot afford to pay people that much,’ she says.
She further alleges that the authorisation of the remuneration was obtained through fabricated minutes of a Trustee Board meeting. She alleges, that it is illegal to receive a remuneration directly from the donors for services rendered to the organisation it funds.
Shafi Sami, however, refutes that there is anything illegal about his payment. ‘It was explicitly for the reason that CRP cannot afford my services that FCRP volunteered to directly pay it. I have authorisation from all relevant departments of the government to receive such payment,’ says Sami. ‘As of today four out of seven members of the board, a majority, will stand by the decisions taken at the meeting. So the question of fabricating any document does not arise,’ he adds.
In August 2006, Shafi Sami relinquished his position as the CEO of CRP, receiving no further payment, only staying on as a managing trustee on voluntary terms.
This war of attrition between the new management and Valerie finally seems to have come to a head over the sacking of an expatriate employee, Adrian Sim, a fund raising consultant at CRP, who had been employed since 2001.
The management discovered that Sim had entered Bangladesh on a multiple entry visa which prohibited employment and according to the National Board of Revenue he had evaded income taxes worth Tk10 lakh.
‘Most of our international staff receive payment from various donor agencies directly to their home accounts. Not one person in the CRP administration ever informed us that he was liable for taxes,’ says Valerie.
‘Sim lost his job one month before his contract was over on the day he had returned after a holiday,’ she adds. Since December 2006, Valerie Taylor and two more members of the Trust have refrained from attending the board’s meetings.
The staff at CRP, at present, are completely divided. According to some insiders, a few corrupt and inept officials at CRP have taken advantage of Valerie Taylor’s simplicity and kind-heartedness to set her up against the new management. Many feel that Valerie Taylor has struggled to cope with the financial and legal matters pertaining to Bangladeshi law.
‘During the Mirpur construction, for five years vouchers had been issued without Valerie’s signature, and overnight, a couple of employees, sensing trouble, made her sign on vouchers worth seventeen crore,’ says Albert Mollah, acting CEO of CRP. ‘She is a very trusting person who understands little of financial matters and also struggles with written Bengali,’ he adds.
Valerie explains that she had been away for eight months from the CRP which is why she had to sign the vouchers on a later date.
While Valerie’s backers feel that this recent move is a virtual coup by its main donor to take over the institution from its founder and to make it a commercial entity, members of the new management claim that it is only a step to protect the institution from corrupt officials and to safeguard Valerie against financial and administrative matters, a role she voluntarily relinquished some years ago.
‘It is completely out of question that Valerie be removed from CRP. It would be an embarrassment for us as a nation,’ says Sami. ‘It is only that the role of co-ordinator has been dropped from her title as it directly intervenes with the role of the CEO in the organisational structure.’
Meanwhile, supporters of Valerie allege that Shafi Sami’s dual role as CEO and managing trustee is illegal. ‘There is no such thing as a managing trustee my lawyers inform me,’ says Valerie.
Valerie further adds that she feels hard done by over the direct intervention of the donors in the day-to-day-running of CRP affairs, right from the employment of Shafi Sami and their inclusion in the TRP.
‘I feel CRP should have an executive director instead of a CEO,’ she says. ‘CRP is also used to a chief who works round-the-clock instead of someone who comes in for a couple of hours everyday,’ she adds.
Many of the older staff of CRP, most of whom are devoted to Valerie are generally suspicious of the new members who have joined post-2004 and occupy senior administrative positions. ‘To know Valerie is to be devoted to her,’ says one of the patients at the centre.
‘Shafi Sami has almost doubled the salary of most of the senior staff to have them in his pocket at this crucial point,’ says one official of CRP.
A major point of conflict is the exorbitant amount being charged of patients for admission. According to Valerie, a majority of the patients now pay Taka 12,000 in advance in addition to Taka 6,000 for the wheel chair.
Shafi Sami however denies there has been any change in the system of payments.
‘CRP’s fees have not changed in the last sixteen years,’ he says.
Most supporters of Valerie feel that four members of the TRP, namely Shafi Sami, Leena Alam, Biswa Nath Chowdhury and Acting Chair Major General (retd) Nurul Huq are using their slim lead of one vote to control the institution and take drastic measures like relieving Valerie Taylor from her role of coordinator.
‘Even Nurul Huq’s position of acting chair was decided in the absence of me, Mushtaque Ahmed and Sayeedur Rahman,’ says Valerie. ‘Once, we tried to have a meeting with Shafi Sami in the absence of his supporters as four members of TRP are authorised to make decisions but he refused to come and instead handed us a legal notice to refrain from the meeting,’ says Valerie.
The CRP premises at Savar now bear a tense look. There are suspicious stares and hushed voices, with employees turned on each other each suspecting the other of being on the other side.
Whatever, the outcome of this conflict, well-wishers of the institution feel that at no cost should the institution, which has played a unique and outstanding role in providing the poorest of the poor with health care, be allowed to be destroyed and that Valerie, a name synonymous with CRP and who has given everything to this institution, must not be pushed to a situation where she is forced to leave. Rather, public sentiment unanimously supports unflagging support for Valerie, even if financial safeguards are put into place.
‘CRP today is an institution where indigenous technology evolved by the centre has attracted attention of international medical community and foreign physical therapists regularly come here to gather experience,’ reads a press release of the Citizens’ Committee to Save CRP. ‘Valerie has given her life time to make it an institution of this stature.’
Other organisations have also rendered their support to Valerie.
The Shishu Bikash Network and Bangladesh Protibondhi Foundation have demanded that government intervene and reinstate Valerie as the coordinator of CRP. ‘Valerie has given active and meaningful lives back to hundreds of persons who were disabled by spinal injuries and other ailments, and laid special emphasis on their socio-economic empowerment and rehabilitation of women in their communities,’ read a joint statement of theirs.
‘Whatever the circumstances’, says one key member of the citizen’s committee, ‘CRP must be saved from the typical way institutions in Bangladesh are destroyed, and Valerie, who has mothered that organisation must be given her due credit and respect’.
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