BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – FOLLOWING months of complaints, organizers of the 2017 St. Kitts Music Festival have cleared off all outstanding debts to service providers.
That announcement came during Tuesday’s (Nov. 14) sitting of the National Assembly, where Minister of Tourism Hon. Lindsay Grant addressed the House on matters under his purview.
According to the Minister, by now all providers would have collected monies owed to them by the Festival Committee.
He thanked them for their patience with the Government leading up to the payment.
“While I am on the Music Festival Mr. Speaker, I want to thank those providers who were quite patient with the Government of St. Kitts and Nevis before they got their payments. And I am pleased to announce to this Honourable House that all the providers of services would by now have collected their monies owed to them.”
The service provider had complained about the length of time it was taking for them to be paid, but the Minister recently disclosed that the organizers had an overrun of $1.1M.
That is despite the Government giving a subvention of $2M for the event.
“…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,” he said recently on a radio programme.
Grant told the House that they had held a retreat over the weekend, where they interacted about where the festival is at and where they are looking to take it.
He said they hope to see a smother festival from the start all the way to payment.
For many years service providers have been complaining about late payments, and that is something Minister Grant is looking to alleviate going forward.
Grant recently said that he told the Festival 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 $2M 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”.
