BBC foreign aid charity under attack for producing safe sex ads in India
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BBC has come under fire after it emerged that its little-known charity is spending more than 15 million pounds of taxpayer cash a year on overseas projects, including a safe sex campaign in India called ‘Condom Condom’.
The campaign included setting up a website and making a series of advertisements encouraging men to wear a condom. Miss India-Universe 2009 Ekta Chowdhry is used in the campaign.
The BBC World Service Trust has offices around the world which employ some 600 people spending some 15m pounds-a-year on international work, reports the Daily Mail.
A romantic soap opera, Iraqi radio station and a climate change campaign in Africa have also received millions of pounds.
Details of the foreign projects emerged just days after Liam Fox, the Defence Secretary, criticised Government overseas aid.
MPs blasted the organisation, which is separate to the World Service, and questioned the BBC's independence when reporting on foreign governments and the charity's donors.
“You imagine that our foreign aid budget is being spent to save lives by pumping fresh water to a drought-ridden village, not to make soap operas,” Philip Davies, a Tory member of the Commons culture committee, told the Sunday Telegraph.
“I’m genuinely concerned that lots of the overseas aid budget is wasted and before the Government starts spraying even more money around you would think they would check that the money already allocated was being wisely spent this would indicate that it probably isn’t,” he added.
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