Pe­ter Ray Blood

The event co-or­di­na­tor of last week­end's UWI De­vel­op­ment and En­dow­ment Fund fete (Brasil 2014), Den­nis Ramdeen, has apol­o­gised to mem­bers of the me­dia who were de­nied food and drinks at the event, which was held in the grounds of the prin­ci­pal's res­i­dence at UWI's St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus.

When mem­bers of the me­dia ar­rived at the venue on Sun­day, their ac­cred­i­ta­tion wrist­bands were re­moved and they were not giv­en a re­place­ment to al­low ac­cess to the food and drink sta­tions. As such, many of them left the venue dis­grun­tled and some have tak­en to Face­book to voice their con­cern­sOn Mon­day, Ramdeen ac­knowl­edged the in­ci­dent and said there had been a mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

He said: "There was a glitch in the sys­tem where the me­dia is con­cerned. It was a sys­tem we had im­ple­ment­ed at the pro­cess­ing points of en­try to the venue. The peo­ple with those bands were to just get en­try to the event. "There was a glitch in that peo­ple who were to get an­oth­er band, in­clud­ing the work­ing me­dia, didn't get them. In all, about 40 peo­ple were af­fect­ed. We ac­tu­al­ly catered for about 500 peo­ple like se­cu­ri­ty and bar at­ten­dants.

"I took per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for that. Af­ter­wards, I went on Face­book and apol­o­gised to the me­dia. I am very sor­ry for the er­ror."Par­ty pro­mot­ers have dif­fer­ent meth­ods of cater­ing to the work­ing me­dia at events. Some give com­pli­men­ta­ry tick­ets while some pro­mot­ers now post the names of me­dia per­son­nel cov­er­ing their events at the door, in­stead of pro­vid­ing in­vites carte blanche to me­dia hous­es.

Up­on ar­rival, jour­nal­ists are re­quired to pro­duce their press pass­es, which are then cross-ref­er­enced with the names on a list to gain ac­cess.Most pro­mot­ers treat mem­bers of the me­dia cov­er­ing the event ex­act­ly as they treat pay­ing pa­trons and al­low them ac­cess to food and drink sta­tions.For­mer Old Hi­lar­i­ans chair­man Ann Mar­guerite-Moore said: "The work­ing me­dia get the same priv­i­leges like every­body else. En­ter­tain­ers and guest artistes have a dif­fer­ent-coloured wrist­band, though, but al­so re­ceive the same cour­te­sies."

Is­land Peo­ple Mas di­rec­tor Dane Lewis, pro­duc­er of Am­ne­sia, added: "We host the me­dia prop­er­ly. The me­dia has al­ways been en­ti­tled to every­thing, just like all pay­ing pa­trons. There is no dif­fer­ence."Dex­ter Charles, a mem­ber of the Trin­i­ty Col­lege So­ka in Mo­ka par­ty, said: "We is­sue me­dia pass­es. We used to have names at the door, but we had is­sues with that sys­tem."Once the per­son has a me­dia pass he is en­ti­tled to all the cour­te­sies ex­tend­ed to all pay­ing pa­trons."

Dean Akin, own­er of Ul­ti­mate Events, pro­duc­er of Tribe ICE, Stumped and 1 Fete, said: "As a gen­er­al rule, all ap­proved me­dia is giv­en full ac­cess to all food and drinks at our events."With the ad­vent of so­cial me­dia we re­ceive much more re­quests, but we ac­com­mo­date the tra­di­tion­al me­dia.

"For work­ers and con­trac­tors, at large events, you can have about 300 peo­ple work­ing, so it be­comes very crit­i­cal, es­pe­cial­ly for all-in­clu­sive events, to give ac­cess to all con­tract­ed work­ers. We give these peo­ple a dif­fer­ent-coloured wrist­band to con­trol things."