Yayasan Suria JB(YSJB) – A thin line between helping, not helping & being ‘conned’!
As one of the many NGOs helping to feed the Poor & Needy during this COVID-19 pandemic, we have detected a small percentage of ‘fraud’ amongst the ugly Malaysians taking advantage of our generosity.
So far, some 21 cases out of the 1,250 families were dubious, with the recipients playing all sort of tricks to get food provisions from us.
These include changing hp nos to avoid detection, changing addresses and even lying about family details like no of family members, sick parents, etc. While it is hard to check the sheer nos by visiting each family which involves a lot of running around, we sometimes ask 2 or 3 of our volunteers to call up the nos given and see whether the stories tally.
As our funds are donated by public, it is our duty and obligation to check the authenticity of each case before dispersing aid to our clients. This checking is laborious but necessary and time consuming.
After being on the ground that long as a volunteer, it’s a battle of outwitting each other.
Now we ask for the latest photo of recipient(not the photo that appeared on WhatsApp) and their NRIC no. This has drastically reduced the fraudulent cases.
The problems are the ones who appeared at our store/foodbank unannounced pleading for help. We take a pic of their NRIC and a recent photo of recepient for our records. It is a never ending task of people trying to cheat us as we get about 35 calls/WhatsApp daily. We caught a guy who brought 4 persons to take dry provisions from us, later to find out that he bought the goodies from them at cheap price and resell them and make a profit.
It takes all kinds of people to make the world go round even in this trying times when the Covid-19 is ravaging.
Many challenges that NGOs/NGIs face but we try to serve everyone needing help with L❤️ve & Humility.
Read on these 2 articles which are more or less similar to what we are facing.