Former defence minister Ron Mark wants the Government to back small groups who are actually getting help to people on the ground in Ukraine.
Mr Mark is on his way home from the war-torn country, where he has been helping Ngāti Kahungunu humanitarian worker Owen Pomana deliver aid and move refugees.
He says travelling around the country he saw no sign of the United Nation or the Red Cross, but he did see what was being done by small non-government organisations.
He told Radio Waatea talk host Matthew Tukaki that the New Zealand government steered him towards the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, but the bureaucracy involved wasn’t a good use of time.
“We’re working now in real-time and we’re already preparing the next and ninth mission which is going in June. We’re not mucking around waiting for the UN to fill in 10,000 forms and sit on a list only to be told 10 months later ‘no’. People are in need now. So what we are doing is collaborating with other Christian entities and trying to get a multiplier,” Mr Mark says.
He has managed to get a memorandum of understanding from the Ukraine government for his coalition of Christian entities, and he’s also talked to Romanian officials about supporting the effort.
