Chester Sam­bra­no

The Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Cul­ture and the Arts is com­ing un­der fire once again over the host­ing of Car­ifes­ta 2019. There are now re­ports that the min­istry owes hun­dreds of peo­ple who pro­vid­ed ser­vices to make the fes­ti­val a suc­cess.

One of the artistes con­tract­ed to per­form, who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty for fear of vic­tim­i­sa­tion, told Guardian Me­dia: “Like my­self there are hun­dreds of sup­pli­ers who have not been paid for Car­ifes­ta ...dancers, artists, mu­si­cians, stage tech peo­ple, sound peo­ple, set de­sign­ers, cos­tume mak­ers ...every­one who in­volved in the Car­ifes­ta which was 95 per cent hu­man re­source ef­fort.”

He said when he was con­tract­ed in June, he was as­sured there would be no late pay­ments. From then he and his fel­low artistes went to work and be­gan to pre­pare for the Au­gust 16 start date.

Three months lat­er, they have not been paid.

“Every­one has washed their hand of it, all the peo­ple who hired the sup­pli­ers,” the artiste said

“The sto­ry needs to be aired and vent­ed to the pub­lic be­cause it is re­al­ly pre­pos­ter­ous and if you ask me it is a re­al bu­reau­crat­ic atroc­i­ty that the hum­ble artistes and the peo­ple who sweat for weeks in ad­vance of Car­ifes­ta to make it what it was that months af­ter they can’t be paid.”

In his own case, the artiste said he is owed $10,000.

“In the face of the irony of the huge par­ty that they threw two and a half months ago with the $4,000 cake, but it wasn’t just that it was pre­mi­um drinks, cater­ing, etc, you know quite a pat on the back for them­selves, the irony is that the artistes still haven’t been paid. What a shame…it’s scan­dalous.”

Last Thurs­day night at a PNM pub­lic meet­ing in Barataria, Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Cul­ture and the Arts, Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly boast­ed about the suc­cess of Car­ifes­ta 2019.

“I went all over the coun­try dur­ing Car­ifes­ta time and all of the com­ments pour­ing in showed how much na­tion­al pride our peo­ple felt about that fes­ti­val,” she said.

Gads­by-Dol­ly said the Min­istry was close to mak­ing the fi­nal pay­ments.

“We put some of the orig­i­nal mon­ey for Car­ifes­ta in­to the bud­get for this fis­cal year so we could set­tle all of those out­stand­ing pay­ments. We knew it would run over be­cause even with­out best ef­forts, and we did our best, there were hun­dreds of in­voic­es com­ing in Sep­tem­ber from Car­ifes­ta be­cause it was late in Au­gust.”

“We had now to en­sure that we paid as much as we could pay up to the end of the fi­nan­cial year which was Sep­tem­ber 30 and then we put it on hold un­til the bud­get was be­ing fin­ished de­bat­ed.”

Ap­proached for com­ment on the claims by the artiste, the Min­istry said in a state­ment that it is “as­sid­u­ous­ly work­ing to have all out­stand­ing pay­ments to artistes done with a tar­get of sec­ond week De­cem­ber 2019.”

The state­ment con­tin­ued: “The Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Cul­ture and the Arts re­grets the in­con­ve­nience caused to per­sons not yet in re­ceipt of pay­ments for ser­vices de­liv­ered for Car­ifes­ta. The staff of the Ac­count­ing Unit processed and made as many pay­ments as pos­si­ble to the last date and time al­lowed be­fore the clo­sure of the 2018-2019 fi­nan­cial year.

While the 2019-2020 bud­get has been passed in Par­lia­ment, funds are yet to be re­leased to con­tin­ue pay­ments.”

Gads­by-Dol­ly vs
Padarath on Car­ifes­ta

Dur­ing the com­mit­tee stage of the Bud­get de­bate, Min­is­ter Gads­by-Dol­ly and Princes Town MP Bar­ry Padarath got in­to a heat­ed con­fronta­tion af­ter he raised ques­tions about cost over-runs on Car­ifes­ta.

Padarath said: “Madam when I look at the fig­ure it is shock­ing, it’s shame­ful and it’s star­tling be­cause when you look at the 2019 es­ti­mate there was $24 mil­lion, the re­vised es­ti­mate is $27.462 mil­lion, which tells us that there have been cost over­runs and this ap­peared to be a run­away horse. In 2020 you have an es­ti­mate of $5 mil­lion af­ter the event has al­ready passed.

“The ques­tion is in light of the gov­ern­ment’s mantra of sav­ing. Why is there an al­lo­ca­tion of an ad­di­tion $5 mil­lion for the host­ing of Car­ifes­ta 2019? Does this re­flect cost over­runs and out­stand­ing bills of 4 thou­sand-dol­lar cakes and cock­tail par­ties?”

To this the Min­is­ter replied: “I no­ticed that the mem­ber would have been very busy dur­ing this pe­ri­od and I say con­grat­u­la­tions to him and I know how it is with young par­ents so he may have missed the fact that Car­ifes­ta was spo­ken about on nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions in the me­dia at $43 mil­lion, so I un­der­stand maybe his con­fu­sion and I sym­pa­thise with him, I re­mem­ber my days.

“How­ev­er, the $5 mil­lion that is al­lo­cat­ed here sim­ply re­flects bills that have to be paid. I know the mem­ber has not been in gov­ern­ment, he does not un­der­stand how a min­istry would ex­act­ly work. How­ev­er, when events are fin­ished we do have in­voic­es that come in af­ter so this is stat­ed here to clear all of those in­voic­es.”