Shal­iza Has­sanali

In the face of heavy crit­i­cism against Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of T&T (TSTT), re­gard­ing poor ser­vice at Be­y­onc�'s I Am Con­cert, the state-owned com­pa­ny plans to cor­rect its wrongs by un­der­tak­ing a re­view. TSTT's man­ag­er of me­dia re­la­tions Graeme Suite gave this as­sur­ance yes­ter­day, as the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions gi­ant came un­der fire from scores of gen­er­al, VIP and VVIP pa­trons who left last Thurs­day's con­cert at Queen's Park Sa­van­nah dis­sat­is­fied, due to what they termed poor or­gan­i­sa­tion and bad ser­vice. VVIP tick­ets were priced at $1,600, with VIP and gen­er­al go­ing at $1,000 and $500, re­spec­tive­ly. Asked who was to be held ac­count­able for the chaos and con­fu­sion that reigned, Suite re­spond­ed: "You are ask­ing the wrong ques­tion, and I am not go­ing to give an an­swer to a ques­tion with who is ac­count­able. "We are not go­ing to is­sue a state­ment blam­ing any­one."

The show was pro­duced by TSTT and its fa­cil­i­ta­tors, LAY Man­age­ment, the com­pa­ny owned joint­ly by sport­ing stars Bri­an Lara and Dwight Yorke. "As a nor­mal busi­ness process, we do a re­view of the projects we are in­volved in, and that re­view will help us get an ap­pre­ci­a­tion of what can be im­proved and what went well. "That is a nor­mal course of op­er­a­tion for us," said Suite. The re­view would not judge or blame any­one. He said while some pa­trons voiced their dis­plea­sure, there were thou­sands who en­joyed them­selves. "I don't know of any event in Trinidad and To­ba­go that left all the pa­trons sat­is­fied," said Suite, as­sur­ing that TSTT will host fu­ture events. Frank Mar­tineau, who brought sev­er­al in­ter­na­tion­al singers to per­form in T&T, among them the Jack­son Five, Rober­ta Flack and Jef­frey Os­borne, said he em­pathised with TSTT for host­ing a con­cert in a dust bowl.

"It's very dif­fi­cult to plan an event of such mag­ni­tude. You may think you have every­thing right, and in the blink of an eye things go hay­wire," said Mar­tineau. "I know that made their (TSTT) lives dif­fi­cult, and it's un­for­tu­nate that a show of that cal­i­bre had to be sub­ject­ed to a dust bowl in the Sa­van­nah. "We have a na­tion­al sta­di­um do­ing noth­ing. My heart goes out to TSTT." Mar­tineau said pri­or to Be­y­onc� com­ing to Trinidad, two of her per­for­mances were done in sta­di­ums abroad. All over the world, Mar­tineau said, sta­di­ums were used for the host­ing of cul­tur­al and sport­ing events. "Our Sports Min­is­ter is prob­a­bly the on­ly one in the world who seems un­in­ter­est­ed in mak­ing cul­ture and sports work. This is what we call world sta­tus." Mar­tineau said based on the poor ser­vice pa­trons faced, TSTT would be af­fect­ed in some way.

Is­sues

?Among the is­sues raised by pa­trons:

1. Too much dust

2. Both males and fe­males forced to use the same toi­lets

3. Lack of wa­ter, lights and toi­let pa­per

4. Due to poor lay­out, dif­fi­cul­ty by VIP and gen­er­al pa­trons to see Be­y­onc� per­form

5. Poor com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween se­cu­ri­ty and or­gan­is­ers, leav­ing some peo­ple con­fused

6. Lack of promised shut­tle ser­vice forced pa­trons to walk from the Sa­van­nah to King George V Park to get to their ve­hi­cles

7. Ex­treme­ly long lines for food