Richard Lord

Sport and Youth Af­fairs Min­is­ter Anil Roberts says Gov­ern­ment spent over $869,000 on the Nic­ki Mi­naj con­cert, which launched the "Lo­calise It" ini­tia­tive on Oc­to­ber 30. Roberts said so dur­ing a news con­fer­ence which, he said, was called to clar­i­fy the min­istry's role in the event and to "come clear­er and clean­er" on the is­sue. This fol­lowed a pub­lic call by Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral MP Dr Amery Browne for an au­dit in­to the show. Roberts gave a break­down of the min­istry's fund­ing of the show which in­clud­ed: lo­cal ad­ver­tis­ing - $150,000; venue in­fra­struc­ture - $75,000; lo­cal fash­ion show - $60,000; lo­cal cul­ture (moko jumbies etc) - $26,000; COTT fees - $32,383; lo­cal artistes fees - $40,000; Hilton Trinidad - $60,343; and, Nic­ki Mi­naj (her en­tourage and agent fees) - $382,000.

He said T&T had ben­e­fit­ed tremen­dous­ly since the stag­ing of the con­cert to launch "Lo­calise It" as there had been sev­er­al pre­sen­ta­tions on US tele­vi­sion net­works. "So at $869,000, al­ready we have gen­er­at­ed ben­e­fits far out­weigh­ing, by 1,000 per cent, what we have spent," Roberts added. Re­spond­ing to ques­tions that af­ter Gov­ern­ment ex­pend­ed mon­ey for the project it ben­e­fit­ed a pri­vate in­di­vid­ual, Roberts said: "The Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs does not con­sid­er, when it is fund­ing or spon­sor­ing or grant­i­ng funds to in­di­vid­u­als, com­pa­nies, ra­dio ad­ver­tis­ing or the like, whether or not the in­di­vid­ual (or) com­pa­ny will make a prof­it. We hope that they will." He said the pro­pos­al "had some mer­it and the min­istry saw some ben­e­fit in get­ting aligned with that prod­uct, so if the in­di­vid­ual makes a prof­it, well that's good.

We wouldn't like them/our cit­i­zens to suf­fer and make loss­es."

Roberts said the min­istry's in­ter­est was far-reach­ing. He said oth­er agen­cies were fund­ed by the min­istry and tick­ets al­so were bought to en­ter the events. He ad­mit­ted, how­ev­er, that the con­cert was not a fi­nan­cial suc­cess. Roberts called on Browne to "fo­cus on the facts and stop try­ing to play games" and ac­cused the Op­po­si­tion MP "of go­ing on a ram­page against Mi­naj." The min­is­ter de­nied pro­mot­er Dar­ryl Brax­ton was the main ben­e­fi­cia­ry from the project. He ad­mit­ted he had "be­come close to" Brax­ton over the past two years but in­sist­ed the as­sis­tance giv­en to Brax­ton for the con­cert had noth­ing to do with their friend­ship. He added: "So any­body who is play­ing ma­li­cious or mis­chie­vous, Dar­ryl Brax­ton, I know him for two years, I would not say that he is my friend but we re­spect each oth­er. He loves Trinidad and To­ba­go and I love Trinidad and To­ba­go.

"The key is­sue is he had the con­tract with Nic­ki Mi­naj–a Trin­bag­on­ian su­per­star–the num­ber one Trin­bag­on­ian out there world­wide. He had the pa­per." He de­nied a claim by Browne that youth or­gan­i­sa­tions were de­nied fund­ing from the min­istry in re­cent weeks be­cause of the ex­pen­di­ture on the con­cert. Roberts said two projects were not fund­ed be­cause the ap­pli­ca­tions were re­ceived three and four days be­fore the dates for the events re­spec­tive­ly. Lat­er he said the fund­ing was tak­en from "part of the youth por­tion" of the min­istry. He in­sist­ed, how­ev­er, that there were many dif­fer­ent sec­tions for youth ini­tia­tives and the mon­ey used for the con­cert could not im­pact neg­a­tive­ly on any oth­er ini­tia­tive in the min­istry.

He said it was "ab­solute­ly false" to say oth­er­wise. Browne said on Mon­day the mon­ey was tak­en from the Youth De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme and it would im­pact neg­a­tive­ly on oth­er ini­tia­tives un­der that pro­gramme. Yes­ter­day Browne said if the mon­ey was in fact tak­en from that pro­gramme "it will crip­ple any oth­er youth de­vel­op­ment events for the rest of the fis­cal year." In re­sponse to Roberts' claim mon­ey have sim­i­lar­ly been al­lo­cat­ed to events, such as the Hamp­ton Games, Browne said those events were fund­ed by non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions and sport­ing as­so­ci­a­tions. He said tax­pay­ers' con­tri­bu­tion to those events was "very dif­fer­ent to this con­cert if the tick­et re­ceipts went in­to pri­vate pock­ets."