Promise to pay outstanding amounts next week
BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – FOLLOWING complaints by service providers and vendors about non-payment for the 2017 St. Kitts Music Festival, the Minister of Tourism, Hon. Lindsay Grant, that they would be remunerated in the coming week, but noted that changes would be made in future events.
Grant, who was a recent guest on Sugar City Roc radio programme - ‘The People’s Voice’ - explained that the St. Kitts Music Festival is a signature product in the development of the local tourism sector, and as such, they had made changes to attract certain demographics to the Federation during that period, including this year with the likes of the Goo Goo Dolls.
He pointed out that the Government has for many years been providing an EC$2M subvention to the event, but that amount is insufficient to cover all costs which has been pegged much higher.
This situation had resulted in the frequent late payments to vendors and service providers, among others, involved in the mega event.
While addressing the issue, Minister Grant said: “I am a firm believer that if you do work you ought to be paid, and not only paid but ought to be paid within a reasonable time…and so I have always been at that level.”
He elucidated that for this year they had encountered a number of challenges that made the $2M subvention “not sufficient”.
“And we had an overrun of some $1.1 million and so we were in negotiations with the Ministry of Finance to get these funds to be able to pay the people. But you know how it is, it is a government and government is like any business – it deals with cash flow and a million dollars is not a little bit of money.
“And obviously since just a lot of people started to argue that they have not been paid, I could understand that and I am not angry with the public for being angry for not getting paid. I understand that!”
According to the Minister, he told the Carnival Committee that he is not looking to go through the payment problem again and that changes should be instituted to ensure that “if the Government is only giving $2million at any given point in time, that we change the formula and change the strategy if it is a down scale of the Music Festival to make sure people get paid”.
Reiteration the position he has taken on the situation, Minister Grant said: “I prefer to downscale the Music Festival and people pay and people are happy, rather than everybody happy and come for the three nights, but then hundreds balling four months after that they not getting paid.”
Against that backdrop, he revealed that they are having a retreat on Saturday to come up with the answers “because I don’t want it to happen again”.
He disclosed that it was only on Monday (Nov. 6) that they got the money from the Government, and so “during the course of next week we start to pay every single provider of services to the Music Festival”.
