Eddie Wong

(Macau Daily) In recent months, staff of an international charity organization were reportedly involved in prostitution scandals by misappropriating public funds. Eddie Wong, President of the Macau Red Cross Central Council, expressed that their donations had not been affected at this time. Appropriations of donations are regularly publicized and under auditor's close scrutiny.

Open and transparent for verification

Mr. Eddie Wong said that Macau Red Cross (MRC) received over MOP10million donations each year, including regular contributions and specific donations for natural disasters. Only in the event of a catastrophic natural disaster, MRC would appeal for public donations, such as the occurrence of Wenchuan mega earthquake in Sichuan Province, they received hundreds of millions of donations for the post-disaster reconstruction projects which were attentively monitored.

Appropriations of all donations were publicized periodically in Macau, and properly audited by professional auditors. The public can also verify how the funds were spent.

Assistance to Hualien earthquake reconstruction

Prior to the Chinese new year, a 6.0 magnitude earthquake impacted Hualien, Taiwan. MRC paid close attentions and concerns to the situation, and maintained constant contacts with Taiwan Red Cross Organization (TRCO). In response to the development, MRC swiftly remitted to them a sum of MOP500,000 from the Disaster Relief Fund for their post-disaster reconstructions.

Soon after the disaster, TRCO dispatched four emergency rescue teams, comprised of 84 volunteers and full-time personnel, who persisted for over 60 hours to assist local government on search and rescue operations. Subsequently, the Organization launched a 3 month duration appeal for disaster relief donations for a target of NT$200million (about MOP53.25 million) to be used on post-disaster reconstructions.

Immediately after the quake, Red Cross Society of China sent a message of condolences to TRCO and provided RMB1million emergency relief fund. Provincial Red Cross Societies along the coast also responded to the fund-raising appeal, such as the Red Cross Societies in Guangxi, Sichuan and Fujian Province contributed RMB 3.195 million, RMB 1.1 million and RMB 1million, respectively to sustain disaster relief projects.