The Parsi Zoroastrian Association of Singapore will not be hosting the 11th World Zoroastrian Congress in 2017 as the requisite two thirds majority did not support the proposal at an extraordinary general meeting on May 31, 2015. (See below)
Email to members of the Parsi Zoroastrian Association of Singapore
Subject: Results of the EOGM held on Sunday 31st May 2015 to decide the future course of action vis-à-vis the WZC
Dear Members,
We want to thank the members who attended the above EOGM on Sunday morning, 31st May 2015 and also to those who sent their respective proxies.
The below outlines the steps taken and the conclusions drawn from the EOGM.
The agenda of the EOGM was to decide whether PZAS should take up the responsibility of hosting the World Zoroastrian Congress in Singapore in December 2017.
Out of the total of 200 plus voting members of PZAS only 37 were physically present and in addition 5 proxies were received. From these we received 40 valid votes.
The procedure for the EOGM was as follows:
Step 1 – The PZAS committee presented the preliminary findings vis-a-vis what it would entail to host this congress.This covered the financial aspects, and also the qualitative pros and cons of hosting this congress.
Step 2 – A survey was done to gauge the thoughts of the community with regards to what they were willing to contribute towards this effort – both in terms of time and money. The results were declared there after,to give members a broad idea of where we collectively stood.
Step 3 – A vote was conducted to answer the question – “Should PZAS host the WZC 2017 ?”
Historically the community has a precedence of taking such large decisions (like the decision to start the Zoroastrian House) through EOGMs and with a 2/3rd majority. There fore in this case also, a 2/3rd (67%) majority was required to pass this resolution.
24 (60%) replied YES to hold the Congress and 16 (40%) replied NO. There fore this resolution was not passed.
Also, on further scrutiny of the supporting forms, we found that though 24 had said YES, only 11 had agreed to volunteer time and/or give some donation. A further 3 had said Yes to time and/or donations, subject to some conditions on funding. Given the enormous resources required for hosting this effort these numbers were not encouraging.
With the above being considered and with the low turnout for the EOGM and the mixed response to the survey, the indication is that we do not have enough support from the community to undertake this effort.
As such the PZAS Committee has decided not to hold the WZ Congress 2017.
The PZAS committee wants to thank and place on record its best wishes to the WZC steering committee if they still plan to hold this congress in Singapore through their own effort.
Individual members are most welcome to help out in this effort directly with the WZC.
Thank you.
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Regards
PZAS