Pres­i­dent of Pan Trin­ba­go Bev­er­ley Ram­sey-Moore said it is the gov­ern­ment that com­mis­sioned the au­dit on the steel­band body and they should go af­ter those who left the as­so­ci­a­tion in fi­nan­cial ru­in.

“Pan Trin­ba­go did not com­mis­sion the au­dit it was the Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment and the Arts and I would be re­al­ly hap­py if they went af­ter them. They left us in a bad sit­u­a­tion,” she told the Sun­day Guardian in a tele­phone in­ter­view.

Ram­sey-Moore, who spoke can­did­ly about the au­dit on Pan Trin­ba­go by Ernst and Young (EY) which was laid in Par­lia­ment in April last year, de­nied claims that she want­ed to “bury the re­port” and move on.

“If it’s any­body that would want to ex­pose the last Pan Trin­ba­go man­age­ment team it would have been me. They made me per­sona non gra­ta. I told them we are now re­cov­er­ing from a nar­ra­tive of an or­ga­ni­za­tion in­volved in putting mon­ey in their pock­ets and they were re­moved and the en­tire slate clean,” she ex­plained.

“I told them that this was not on the agen­da of this meet­ing to be dis­cussed but we shall have an­oth­er meet­ing where that can be dis­cussed.”

Ram­sey-Moore ad­mit­ted that she hoped the EY re­port would not have been made pub­lic be­cause she feared it would fur­ther taint Pan Trin­ba­go’s im­age.

“I felt this is our busi­ness and we have to dis­cuss this on the in­side,” she said.

She agreed, how­ev­er, that they had to ac­count for their monies as well as to pan play­ers who are owed more than $7.8m in re­mit­tances.

“We as a new body can­not af­ford this type of pan rev­enue to treat with the is­sues of the play­ers,” she said.

Ram­sey-Moore said she read the re­port in its en­tire­ty and was dis­heart­ened by the state of Pan Trin­ba­go and the waste­ful and wild spend­ing that took place un­der the last ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“This is why there is an MOA for the next two years be­tween Pan Trin­ba­go and the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC). Most of our bills are paid by them and the on­ly mon­ey we get is to deal with ad­min­is­tra­tive ex­pens­es,” she said.

To avoid ex­or­bi­tant staff costs, Ram­sey-Moore said “there are no perks, no hon­o­raria noth­ing like that. This ex­ec­u­tive is func­tion­ing to per­form events.”

She said there is a $3m over­draft left by the last ad­min­is­tra­tion which they are “chip­ping away to pay it off.”

“We have paid back about $300,000 but that is just a drop in the ocean. There is still a long way to go but as we said at the AGM the theme is weath­er­ing the storm and ad­just­ing the sales.”

Ram­sey-Moore said she is de­ter­mined to change the im­age and per­cep­tion of Pan Trin­ba­go We are com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing things are dif­fer­ent. We are go­ing to work hard with our mem­bers to clean up this ad­min­is­tra­tive di­ar­rhoea. Trust me it will hap­pen and I stand com­mit­ted to ac­tion that changes for the bet­ter,” she said.