New team spends $90,000 in five weeks

New team spends $90,000 in five weeks

Wearing a black dress and a string of pearls, lawyer Karen Teoh, 30, queued up patiently, and when her turn came to speak, articulated a question that was already being muttered on many lips.

‘How much money have you spent so far?’ she asked the Josie Lau team.

Honorary treasurer Maureen Ong gave a long and detailed explanation of how Aware’s skyrocketing membership numbers - which had gone from about 300 five weeks ago to nearly 3,000 last Friday - had prompted several venue changes.

The executive committee (exco) finally settled for the Suntec City venue which cost more than $18,000.

The gasp across the hall was audible, since $20,000 is the upper limit of what the exco is authorised to spend in a month.

But there was more to come. Minutes later, Ms Lottie Poole, who identified herself as a ‘proud and dedicated fund-raiser’ for Aware, asked: ‘How much money have you spent in the one month you have been on the exco?’

Ms Ong replied that the figures were not confirmed, but it was roughly $90,000.

‘We are horrified,’ countered long-time Aware member Poonam Mirchandani, a lawyer. ‘We will look to you personally for reimbursements over $20,000.’

Ms Ong replied, as often throughout the seven-hour meeting, that the team would ’seek legal advice’.

Her revelation that the new team had spent $90,000 in five weeks opened a barrage of protests and rebukes, with many members saying the exco could have spent a lot less.

New member Rose Tan, a public-relations veteran, said she was shocked that the exco was paying for things like renting a venue when it could have been had for free.

The new exco also faced flak for hiring what some members perceived as pricey auditors and lawyers from the firm of Rajah & Tann to help conduct the proceedings.

‘If you had reached out and called, you would have got free legal advice,’ said lawyer Mark Goh, who said he served as legal adviser to the old Aware committee for free.

‘Did you even ask?’

A member from the floor also wondered if the overspending on the exco’s part needed to be reported to the Commissioner of Charities, which keeps tabs on whether all charities follow the letter of the law.

But the exco found some support from the floor in accountant Lim Wee Lim, 55.

Identifying himself as a member of the Church of Our Saviour - which several exco members attend - he said to some applause: ‘If you take away $90,000 from $120,000 that you got, you still have $30,000 more than before.’

He was referring to the windfall in membership fees Aware collected - at $40 a person - from all those who swelled its membership in recent weeks.

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