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SINGAPORE: The leadership of the Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE) says it will not take legal action to recover expenses incurred by the previous executive committee during its short term in office.
AWARE has also proposed extensive changes to its constitution and has submitted them to the Registrar of Societies.
Among the changes: only those with at least two years' membership can run for elections. The board also has the right to sack anyone who acts against AWARE's objectives.
AWARE's assistant honorary secretary, Ms Corinna Lim, said: "We have already put in progress a set of constitutional changes which are actually quite extensive. They would actually prevent a situation like 2nd of May from happening again."
Earlier this year, a power struggle broke out between the old and new guards of the association. The then new team, led by Ms Josie Lau, had taken over AWARE and was subsequently voted out in May at the Extraordinary General Meeting.
At that time, AWARE members had asked Ms Lau's committee to return the money used to organise the EGM.
But the current AWARE president, Dana Lam, said that she will not try to recover the costs, which amounted to more than S$99,000. The decision came after an internal review was conducted to find out how much was spent by the former committee and what they had spent it on.
Speaking at a media briefing on Monday, Ms Lam explained that the organisation's accounts are still in the black.
More than 2,700 people signed up as new members to vote at the meeting during the saga and it collected more than S$98,700 in membership fees. While this was not enough to offset the total cost of the meeting, Ms Lam said the association also managed to secure donations from various companies.
She said: "One of the first things we did was to write to them and say if they can consider donating some money back to AWARE because this is a large sum. So as of now, what we've managed to do is we have managed to recover at least S$8,000 from the total spent."
Ms Lam added that the review team found that the former committee led by Ms Josie Lau did not adhere fully to established practices. But she acknowledged that the team lacked experience and was under tremendous pressure at that time.
Ms Lam elaborated on AWARE's decision. "So I think that as we're able to recover some of the money anyway, (from) the generosity of the donors, we don't see a need to pursue this further. But more importantly, we want to be free from this, so that we can carry on with our work."
AWARE needs S$400,000 every year to operate. It hopes to raise S$200,000 by year-end. What it has in the kitty right now should last till the end of the year.
On AWARE's sexuality education courses for students, Ms Lam said the association has plans to tweak its current programme to suit the needs of parents and teachers, after an internal review.
The programme, in its current form, had sparked a nationwide debate on the kinds of sex education programmes being taught in schools. Many parents were unhappy with the content and the explicitness of the material found in AWARE's Comprehensive Sexual Education: Basic Instructor Guide.
This had prompted the Education Ministry to suspend such programmes run by external groups.
Ms Lam said the programme has been put on hold after the ban. She told reporters that there are plans to re-package the programme, but AWARE will take its time to do so.
- 938LIVE.
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