BASSETERRE, St. Kitts - THE monies which were owed to the local artistes who performed at the Caribbean Premier League’s (CPL) Mega Concert in August, 2014 have been made available and at least one artiste has been paid.
In an interview with SKNVibes, Minister of Sports the Hon. Glen Phillip assured that the monies had been made available but indicated that he was not sure if they had been collected.
SKNVibes was successful in contacting the Manager for the Small Axe Band, Gregory Warner, who informed that his band had been paid.
This publication is not certain however if the others – Infamus, Dagah and Nu Vybes - collected their monies.
Minister Phillip described the situation as “sad” and explained that although the name of the government was involved in the dispute, the only dealings it had was the forwarding of a list of names of local artistes to the CPL organisers from which they could choose.
“The sad thing about it is all we were trying to do is assist. We had no contractual arrangement with the artistes. The artistes went and negotiated on their own. I really had no idea about those negotiations until I heard they did not get paid. So it is unfair drag the government in it when they did all their negotiations on their own.
He said the government played an additional role in helping to resolve the situation.
“All we did was trying to assist them in getting paid. But for them to submit that the government owed them… government has never been in position in terms of being in those negotiations. The fact that they were trying to put heat on the government is what I don’t understand. All we did is that when they had the concert they asked us for the top artistes, we gave them ten names and they took four names out of the ten and that was the extent of our involvement. So I really don’t understand what this is all about.”
