Nine months after Western aid officials condemned customs delays blocking delivery of humanitarian supplies to hospitals and orphanages, Ukrainian bureaucrats are debating how to destroy a 21-ton shipment of donated medicines that expired while waiting in storage for nearly two years.
The shipment of drugs was sent to Ukraine in February 1996 by the Rotary Club, a U.S. charity, at the request of Ukraine's health minister. They then were impounded by Ukrainian customs officers, who said the pharmaceuticals were not accompanied by documents showing that they had been approved for use either in Ukraine or the United States.
The health minister, Yevhen Korolenko, was fired for incompetence several months later, and could not be reached for comment this week. Former Kyiv Rotary Club President Vasyl Shylov said he found out about the huge aid shipment three days before the plane's arrival, when American Rotary Club members sent him a fax asking him to meet the cargo. 'Naturally, we refused to download the plane, because we did not order any medicines,' said Shylov. For 22 months the medicines sat in the warehouse, while patients in allegedly free Ukrainian hospitals were asked to either pay for drugs or suffer without them. Now the mountain of pharmaceuticals has a new owner who doesn't want them.
Valery Sirenko is chief of the Ecology Department at the Environment Ministry, and what bothers him most is that among expired medicines are such substances as codeine, a common narcotic painkiller. 'To date, Ukraine does not have an environmentally safe technology for reprocessing psychotropic and narcotics-containing drugs,' he said. The expired medicines join a long list of other examples of squandered aid, from oranges for Odessa orphans allowed to rot before being dumped into a harbor to furniture for flooding victims in western Ukraine still sitting at a customs checkpoint.
The former example was given in March by a Western diplomat at a time when numerous humanitarian aid organizations complained that Ukraine was trying to collect import duties and value-added tax from their aid shipments. The latter was given this week by Brian Propp, director of Counterpart Humanitarian Assistance Program, who said Kolomiya customs officers have refused to release the furniture since October despite a letter from the National Customs Committee exempting the cargo from taxes and customs duties.
'That's as legitimate humanitarian assistance as there is,' said Propp.
While customs officers are not as likely to attempt to tax humanitarian aid as they were earlier this year, they are taking even longer to release foreign donations, according to aid officials. 'In terms of the delays, it's gotten worse,' Propp said.
Pavlo Smyrnov, program coordinator of the Children of Chernobyl charity, agreed. He said every shipment received by his group since 1991 has been held up by customs. In one of the pending cases, a shipment of vitamins sent to the charity about a year ago is still sitting at the Svitlovodsk customs checkpoint.
'Even when we have official Cabinet resolutions allowing us to clear humanitarian aid at customs, the customs do not want to do it,' he said. 'Customs officials demand one piece of paper after another.'
A Western aid official who asked not to be named blamed official corruption. 'Each time customs officers create long delays so that they can get bribes, and [we] have to go into battles with them,' said the official. Faced with official lethargy and obstructionism, Western donors in the United States, Canada, Germany and the Netherlands have reduced the flow of humanitarian aid to Ukraine. Propp said his organization has cut shipments by up to 35 percent in the last year.
Vitaly Kutsyuk, chief expert of the Humanitarian Aid Commission set up by the Ukrainian government, acknowledged the reduced volume of aid, but said he could not explain it. He said his agency lacks the authority to resolve specific aid delays.
'All decisions are taken locally by local administrations and the recipient,' he said. 'The Cabinet cannot do much about it.'
