Awema chair says finance director 'was not a scapegoat'

From BBC Wales ‘The chairwoman of a defunct charity for ethnic minority people has denied its finance director was made a "scapegoat" for the organisation's failures.

Dr Rita Austin, former chair of the All Wales Ethnic Minority Association (Awema), told an employment tribunal she acted responsibly as an employer.

Awema finance director Saquib Zia is claiming unfair dismissal.

He was accused of gross misconduct and sacked in February after a Welsh government audit report.

The report, launched after allegations of financial mismanagement at Awema, warned of "significant and fundamental failures".

Dr Austin told the tribunal in Cardiff that Mr Zia, who earned more than £50,000 a year, could not be offered an opportunity to appeal the decision because Awema "ran out of road" when its Welsh government funding was terminated.

With the Charity Commission launching its own inquiry, she said Awema needed to act "decisively" in the wake of the report.

Dr Austin said the charity's reputation had been "trashed" and she was worried other black and ethnic minority charities were in danger of being "tarnished".

Christopher Howells, counsel for Mr Zia, asked if his client had been made a "scapegoat... removing the spotlight from others in the organisation". Dr Austin said: "There was no feature that we were scapegoating anybody. "They were held responsible for those decisions for which they were responsible."

The decision to summarily dismiss Mr Zia was taken on the basis of the Welsh government's audit findings, Dr Austin said.'

The rest is HERE

If bandwagon jumping was an Olympic sport

No surprise to see First Minister Carwyn Jones jumping at the chance to bask in the reflected glory of our athletes for the second time this year (after the Grand Slam Senedd parade) by announcing a homecoming parade for Welsh Olympics and Paralympic athletes yesterday.

The Welsh public do want to say thanks to the athletes and celebrate their achievements, but it’s  a pity that Carwyn and his fellow minister didn’t take a leaf out of the athletes book and grabbed a small slice of the world wide attention that was on London and to a lesser extent Cardiff to show the best of Wales to the world in culture, business and  tourism. 

I hope that the opposition will ask questions about the lack of action on this issue on their eventual return from recess in September/October and press the First Minister into trying to salvage what he can to make sure this is not a totally wasted opportunity for Wales.

After all the Scottish and Irish Government’s managed to have the foresight to take advantage of London 2012 along with many other countries who had showcases in London.

So yet again we are left wondering why didn’t the Welsh Government do more than pay for an ad campaign in London and why we Welsh continue to accept such inadequacy and indifference from those who claim to be ‘standing up for Wales’?