Aware members demand: “Account for our money!”

Aware members demand: “Account for our money!”

Sunday, 3 May 2009

By Choo Zheng Xi and Khairulanwar

THE drama didn’t let up while votes were being tallied by external auditors Deloitte and Touche.

From 4.30 pm till the final count at 7.30pm, member after member continued to castigate the new committee on a range of issues from their understanding of feminism to the amount of money they had spent so far a month into their term.

One burning issue members demanded an answer to was how much of Aware’s funds has been spent in the last month. The Aware constitution requires the Executive Committee to seek the consent of members before approving expenditures above $20,000.

One member pointedly asked Honorary Treasurer Maureen Ong if her committee had used more than $20,000 in organising the EGM, and noted asked if her committee had acted beyond the powers granted to them in the Aware constitution. Picking up the question of financing, members from the floor started demanding an estimate for how much had been spent so far.

Ms Ong announced that an estimated $80,000 had been spent on lawyers, auditors, and venue bookings. This brought the audience to its feet in anger.

Calling the spending “extravagant”, Aware member Loretta Chen said it was the “turning point” as it indicated that the team headed by Ms Josie Lau “may not be the best to lead AWARE”, despite being “well-meaning women”. Running a group such as AWARE required a set of values that was different from their “corporate ethics.”

Mark Ho, the legal adviser to the Old Guard, questioned whether Josie Lau’s exco tried to “reach out” and “call for help” in organizing the EGM, to save on fees for event organizers, legal help and the various miscellanies.

Social worker Suzanne Jarzabkowska commented that in “an NGO culture, money is the last thing we reach for” – preferring to “work by consensus” and leveraging on the “network” of civil society. By resorting to a “chequebook culture”, it underlined that Ms Lau’s team “does not understand how NGO works.”

Ms Bridget Lew, the director of HOME, derided the expenditure as “shameful” for an NGO whose ethics are usually to “work hard (and) struggle hard.”

It is unclear at this point of time how Aware will defray the costs for the expenditure, or whether Ms Lau’s team will bear any of the costs.

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