By Kalpana
Yesterday I received a call from Relief India Trust. I was told by the girl that she received my contact number from the references put up on the form by a Blood donor who donated blood in a camp in Mumbai. The phone was then handed over to a so called co-volunteer, who asked me to logon-to the website to make the transaction and explained me the procedure. As I was in the office and as my Manager wanted to speak to me, I said I’ll do it later. But the guy who explained me the process was insisting that I do it right away as it would hardly take time inspite of knowing that my office people wanted to speak to me at that very moment. I told them I will do it the next day through offline mode of transfer. They said they will confirm the bank details through SMS. Accordingly, they sent me the details this morning and were constantly following up for the donations untill I go to the bank and pay up and they remembered my name very well. Soon after that, when I tried to call the girl again to ask for the receipt of payments, the girl asked me “who’s this”. After giving her my name and asking for the receipt, I was told that the receipt will be sent within 24 hours. Some things I really found strange here: 1) How come the volunteers are so willingly calling up and messaging people through their cell numbers without being bothered about with their bills would go upto. It clearly looked like their cell-phone bills were completely taken care of. 2) When the volunteer knew that I was at work and was being called by my senior, why was he so insistent that I leave my official work aside and make the donation. As per my observation, the volunteers don’t insist so-much upon getting donations. After depositing the amount in their bank account, when I came online, I was shocked to see the reviews of this trust (or should I say this so called trust). This NGO is not officially registered, which I figured out upon performing a search on http://ngo.india.gov.in . This clearly is a fraud.