AWARE’s Public Education Officer Quits

Today ran this story on 25 April 2009:

Aware’s public education officer quits
By Esther Ng

SHE was barely two months into the job before Aware’s centre manager Schutz Lee was sacked.

The reasons, according to Aware vice-president Charlotte Wong: Insubordination, blocking the president’s email and poor performance — allegations rebutted by Ms Lee.

“It was mostly performance-based,” Ms Wong told Today. She said she was alerted to Ms Lee’s performance by volunteer Lilian Wong who had helped out during the transition.

“Let me give you an example: I’ve been receiving irate calls from people, who, when signing up as ordinary members online, got a ‘student membership’ message,” said Ms Wong. “They were not students, but this problem has been ongoing for some time. As vice-president, I am concerned about these things.”

The association has student, ordinary, associate and life memberships.

On Friday, Ms Lee refuted the charges. “Firstly, I’m not a techie person. If there’s a problem, I’ll call the vendor,” she said, adding that the problem had existed for almost a year and she had got the vendor to look into it.

As to the charge of locking Aware president Josie Lau out of the organisation’s email system, Ms Lee said: “Charlotte comes to the office every day unlike Josie. On April 17, Charlotte asked me for the password to the president’s email. I gave her the password, the same one which I had given to (former president) Constance Singam — this was around 4.30pm. She spent around half-an-hour trying to access the email, but couldn’t.”

So, Ms Lee contacted their webmaster, who “created a password immediately” and gave it to Ms Wong before the vice-president left the premises.

As for insubordination,Ms Wong said Ms Lee corrected the president when she was making a statement to the media on April 15. Ms Lau had told the press that she was “delighted to have been elected”, at which point, Ms Lee pointed out that Ms Lau had been “appointed”.

Ms Lee, 41, said she had worked with many chief executives as a public relations consultant and marketing director, and it was her job to correct them when they were wrong.

“Is this insubordination?” she asked.

Ms Lee’s contract was due to expire on May 31.

The acrimonious exit ofMs Lee saw Aware’s public education executive Joanna D’Cruz also throw in the towel on Friday.

Said Ms D’Cruz: “It was the way they fired Schutz so easily. I was scared — this is my first job. I’m quite outspoken and I don’t like confrontations ... I don’t want to be fired.”

Aware has appointed a new manager, Ms Magdalene Teo, a member of Church of Our Saviour.