New Delhi: Debilitating poverty stares at around 150,000 children in India after their government decided to restrict the operations of a global charity.

Compassion International, which has worked with local churches in India for 48 years to support children and their families living in poverty, will wind up its operations in the country on March 15.

In July 2016, Compassion was alerted by local partners that the Indian government had, several months earlier, frozen funds critical to its operations. The government was not releasing the money to the 589 church partners who manage projects supporting Indian children, reports eternitynews.com.au.

Tim Hanna, CEO of Compassion Australia, told Eternity, “They didn’t tell us [they weren’t distributing the money]. When we made enquiries, they said that they were freezing the funds and that [we weren’t] able to distribute.”

“There hasn’t been a clear reason given. I think the government itself is clamping down on foreign NGOs and we’re one of the larger ones of those.

“We trust that the local church will keep looking after them, but with less resources.”

“We presume it has to do with religious reasons, with a government that’s less and less sympathetic to specific Christian ministries. We can only assume that’s the reason as well. [But] they haven’t said that clearly to us.”

Compassion supporters around the world support 147,000 Indian children, the largest in-country project run by the organization. About 6,000 of those supporters are Australian.

Hanna hopes that Aussies who have sponsored Indian children will consider sponsoring a child elsewhere in the world, because “that would mean that the fight against poverty doesn’t even take one small step backwards.”

While Compassion will officially withdraw from India mid March, local churches will continue to serve Indian children and their families.

Hanna said they hope to be back into India as soon as possible to continue to make a difference again. “It’s a setback, but we always have hope. We would hope to be back into India making a difference again as soon as possible. Whether that happens in the near future, we can’t predict.

He pointed out that their beneficiaries have now become doctors, lawyers, nurses, teachers and pastors.