This article comes from Tencent News “periscope” section Author: Zhang Jun
How many difficulties do you need to go through to collect donations from cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, etc. to hand out masks and protective clothing to doctors and nurses?
Early January, a new type of coronavirus has swept across China. Commercial companies, foundations, ordinary people, and overseas Chinese students have made donations at an unprecedented rate. Including corporate fundraising and public fundraising for the public, the amount of this charity is at least billions.
On the other hand, the voice from Hubei Wuhan Hospital keeps reminding us: a shortage of supplies. Videos from Wuhan Hospital show that doctors in multiple hospitals do not drink water a day in order to save disposable protective clothing, and masks have been in short supply, and even New Year’s Eve doctors and nurses ’lunch is simple instant noodles and cookies.
On the one hand, there is an ambitious rescue operation. On the other hand, medical supplies in Wuhan and even Hubei are in urgent need. Where does this contrast come from? Many people interviewed said that they are not worried about money now, but it is full of twists and turns to get materials and send them forward.
1, late at night, I found a liar
“The scammers are even more professional than us, with stamps and signatures readily available,” said a secretary general of a charity foundation. He took the time to interview us at 9:30 pm on January 26, 2020, and was panting on the phone. At this time, the public opinion of the new coronavirus was fermented for 5 days, and the employees of the nonprofit organization were almost busy.
“The donation was the craziest on the evening of the Spring Festival Gala, and the fundraising of all channels increased exponentially.” An online fundraising platform project leader said that online fundraising alone has reached at least 1 billion in recent days, and history is rare. The public donations from enterprises, for example, the Internet companies alone, exceeded 2.5 billion yuan. “You look at it in just a few days. It’s quite scary.”
Dozens of users donate on their platform every second until two or three in the morning. According to him, the total amount of Internet charity fundraising in 2018 was about 3.2 billion; while the amount of fundraising for general natural disasters was hundreds to tens of millions; in contrast, this time the scale of donations was huge and still increasing Many people ask on the platform that this project is full of donations, and whether there are other projects that can donate.
On one side are urgent donors, and on the other side, after the fundraising platform has raised funds, the funds go straight.The flow goes to various foundations, which are executed by the foundations. The priority of the foundation is to maximize the use of this money to purchase materials and transport them to the front of the affected area.
Of these, procurement and shipping are key points. There is no shortage of money now, what is really scarce is supplies. “Purchasing is the Eight Immortals crossing the sea, each showing its magical powers,” said the above person.
The secretary-general of the charity foundation has set up a group of 15 material procurement suppliers in WeChat, and spent 3 consecutive days in rushing for supply and price bombardment. After hanging up the phone, his mobile phone showed hundreds of unread reminders, and he was busy every day after 2 am. At the juncture of the whole people, he did not expect that he was almost deceived by 560,000 yuan.
The cheat path looks crazy. On January 25, someone contacted the foundation in the name of an airline’s asset management department, and claimed that they had a batch of nearly 200,000 N95 masks in stock-120,000 of which were willing to donate and 70,000 needed to purchase , But indicated that it was a “half price sale” of the winning price. The other party provided a series of airline documents that looked legitimate.
Description of material sales provided by scammers, for pictures / interviews for charity funds
A document entitled “Instructions for the Sale of Emergency Materials of the Asset Management Department of XX Aviation Co., Ltd.” shows that these masks were handed over by the aircraft department for the application of Wuhan Coronavirus epidemic. Masks. The mask is a 3M medical protective mask, the document is equipped with the winning time and number, and the airline seal.
“The bidding price for their successful bid is 16 yuan, and half price is equivalent to 8 yuan.” said the secretary general. The total purchase price of this batch of goods is 560,000. “We subconsciously believe that the materials reserved by the airlines must meet the standards.” What made the Foundation even more impressed was that the other party promised that the masks would be directly transported by airlines to Wuhan.
“It must not be used for profit, and all shipping costs incurred are borne by the company.” They wrote in the document vowedly.
Material sales contract provided by scammers, for fundraising / interview public welfare fund
In hindsight, there are several flaws in the file. First, the contract they provided looked up, and the airline name was written incorrectly; second, in the contract text, they misused Party A and Party B multiple times; third, the mailbox left by the other party could not receive mail after testing.
In order to strengthen the trust, the scammers deliberately printed the words “Cc: XX Chairman, XX General Manager, XX Chief Accountant, Administrative Management Department, Board of Directors Office” below the material sales instructions provided by the fraudsters. Is the real name of the airline executive. Generally speaking, CC will only appear in the e-mail instead of the text. This is a bit of a cover-up, but in the context of the epidemic area support that must be fought every second, the organizers have too little time to think about it.
“You only need to pay a deposit of 100,000 yuan, and you can take all the goods. They are direct to Wuhan by air. That’s great! Let’s talk quickly.” The Secretary General expressed eagerness.
Until the signing of the contract, the foundation’s legal affairs found that the payee was not an airline. They searched by company name, which was cancelled in mid-2019. At this time, the responsible personnel of the foundation raised vigilance. He also learned from other channels that the team was also asking other non-profit organizations at the same time and asking them to pay a deposit.
According to the Secretary-General, These scammers first targeted foreign student groups , because international students showed enthusiasm in the front line of support, but they may not be able to consume supplies, and they followed the foundation. The foundation has reported the case.
As of the evening of the 25th, the Foundation released the press release to wait for the delivery news. “No way, I have no way to confirm that he is a liar until late at night.” The above-mentioned secretary general said, “I can bear the price increase, at most I do not choose, but it is too bad to show up to deceive.” He hopedSupervision of market prices of anti-epidemic supplies such as medical supplies, antiviral drugs and related medical devices. “The country must be in control, but this is human nature, there is no way.” The above-mentioned Secretary General said, “There is no way we can talk about human nature.”
Xi Xiwei said that they have been out of stock on the market since the 26th. They contacted many mask manufacturers, and even if they did, the price was quite high-N95 masks cost 30 yuan. On another occasion, they bought disposable medical masks, which arrived at 1 am on the New Year’s Eve, and colleagues removed more than 50 cases of masks together.
I didn’t expect that the quality of these 2 yuan / piece masks was too poor, which was completely different from the actual products shown to them by the manufacturers. They immediately decided to return the goods. The other side said with a disdain, don’t rush for a lot of people, you can sell 3 times the price at the subway station, he has sold 500,000 that day.
佘 Xiwei bought a mask of poor quality and decided to return it.
“We don’t want to send them such national hardships, and this kind of behavior must not indulge them.” During the interview, many people revealed similar ideas. Another Internet industry participant who participated in the rescue said that they took outrageous prices. The sources of supply have been filtered out, and only sources of supply less than 10 yuan have been purchased.
Masks are still scarce, let alone protective clothing. “Basically I haven’t bought it yet,” said Wu Xiwei. Luo Ran also made it clear that it is difficult to find protective clothing that truly meets the standards on the market. There are very few manufacturers themselves, and the charity has not been contacted before. “Frankly, I dare not buy.” He managed to find a batch of 5000-scale protective clothing, with a hat and no shoes, which cost more than 30 pieces. However, because the protective clothing was an export product and it came from a raw material manufacturer, it could not enter the hospital without undergoing secondary processing. They sought a compromise solution-for sanitation workers in the affected areas. At present, the procurement of protective clothing can only rely on large funds and institutions with stronger channel capabilities.
In the chaos, some people even pretended to be hospitals to intercept supplies. “Attention to donations, there are those who cut off materials in our hospital.” A medical staff was in the rescue groupCall out. The hospital that Xi Xiwei docked also received a strange call asking for logistics information: “I’m really worried about the life-saving supplies being impersonated.”
3, who will assign it?
After the outbreak, Wuhan New Crown Pneumonia Prevention and Control Headquarters proposed that all supplies need to be deployed by them. At present, most non-profit organizations will contact the local Red Cross or Charity Federation when they find the source of the goods, and ask whether the material is needed and tell them which hospital to send to. However, some civil organizations prefer to provide targeted support to hospitals and doctors. In their view, official agencies may primarily support head hospitals, while other hospitals outside the public eye are facing a more critical situation.
The sponsors of the above-mentioned non-governmental organizations said that, for example, a specialist hospital in Wuhan did not set up a fever clinic or a designated hospital, but more than a dozen doctors were infected and were unknown to outsiders. They hope to send supplies directly to front-line doctors to supplement some of the supplies that official organizations are inclined to provide.
They collect goggles-based materials from domestic, South Korea, Japan, India and other places through their own channels, and send the material information to the hospital procurement department to see if they need it. The other party feedbacked that if the hospital’s channels did not purchase the materials themselves, the current situation is that “some hospitals have nothing, and even use plastic bags as protective clothing.” “Some are good”, so donations are urgently needed.
“The biggest problem now is not just lack of supplies, but problems with distribution and distribution in the middle.” The above-mentioned people are concerned that the Red Cross has accumulated too much supplies, resulting in a decrease in distribution efficiency, and they support hospitals and Doctors can be more effective in filling some of the current shortages. So their thinking is to help hospitals in need of materials to ease the short-term pressure for three or four days until the materials from official channels are delivered to them.
There is a contradiction in this. Official organizations such as the Wuhan Red Cross need to coordinate materials, while some civil society organizations want peer-to-peer support. The differences in rescue ideas have diverged between the two. For example, the above-mentioned persons first delivered the materials to Wuhan through China Railway Express, and then the enthusiastic people in Wuhan drove the materials to the designated hospital, but the line was later broken. Although Debon claims that it can transport public goods for free, it has many restrictions on weight and corporate identity. So you can only enter through SF.
“This road may be blocked now.” He said in an interview on the 27th, “We are helpless now, we have been searching for a lot of goods, but we ca n’t deliver them. The doctor at the hospital I’ve contacted them, but I can’t deliver them.