BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – A week after the story hit this website that local graphics company Googal Arts claimed that the People’s Action Movement (PAM) owed him some EC$147 000, members of the party are claiming that it is not true.
Speaking in an interview with Don Boncamper and Lindsey Grant, they both claim that Googal Arts, which is owned by Gretson ‘Googal’ Isaac, never did any work for them in 2004 and that in 2010, the company did do some work for them.
“In 2004, the Party did not contract Googal Arts for anything for the Party. I was responsible for any payments and cheques; it was myself, the chairman and treasurer responsible. Mr. Grant signed no cheques and didn’t engage anyone to do any work for the Party,” Boncamper said. (Cheques were produced with signatures of the chairman and treasurer)
“All of our printing, billboards and t-shirts were actually done in Trinidad. The reason we went outside was because of the type of printing that we wanted and the quality we wanted could not be done locally in the short space of time,” he added.
Boncamper said they printed their yellow shirts at a local printing company and paid well over EC$120 000.
“As far as we’re concerned we don’t owe Googal arts anything from 2004,” Boncamper said.
Both Boncamper and Grant claimed that the 2004 bill which features the amount EC124 000, for work Googal Arts did for the Party leading up to the 2004 elections surfaced after the 2010 bill.
Boncamper said that the Company was paid a total of EC$9 000 for work they did for the 2010 elections.
He also presented those cheques to SKNVibes showing where a cheque of EC $5 000 was made out to Googal Arts on February 5, 2010 and cashed the same month while another was of EC$4 000 also made out to Googal Arts on May 12, 2010 and cashed the same month.
Grant also claimed that Isaac came to his home sometime in 2011 and said that a bailiff was waiting to collect money from him.
Grant said that Isaac told him the Party owed EC $12 000 and that Isaac asked for half of the money that would settle the bill.
“I said ‘Googal I do not sign cheques for PAM. What I will do I will give you a personal cheque, if you said this will extinguish the debt’. So I gave him a cheque of EC$3,000 and my understanding was that giving him EC$3,000 would extinguish the debt,” he said.
When asked if they were given a bill for work done in 2010, Boncamper said that a number of stuff was not accounted for.
“If I could recall, a lot of things were happening and we were trying to get things done. A lot of things were not written down, but I could recall him coming to the office (PAM Secretariat) and we had to hustle to get some Uprights, and he took them and there was an agreement to pay a certain figure for his labour. So that’s where the EC$4 000 and EC$5 000 came in,” Boncamper said.
“The amount of work he had to do was not a lot of work, because I know he had to put up some signs up Greenlands and in each constituency a small portrait of each candidate,” he said.
Both men admit that Isaac did do work for them for the 2010 elections but the work was not a large amount that would add up to EC $32 000.
He said that their signs were not done by Isaac and according to the bill with the work listed with flags, banners, etc. they do not know what he is speaking about.
Grant also claimed that Isaac was given a US cheque of $1 000 as he instructed his wife to do when he came to his wife’s workplace while he was away.
The men said jointly the party and Grant paid Isaac some EC$14 700.
As Grant stated in the last article, “why would Isaac agree to do work for them in 2010 if they owed him monies in 2004.
Isaac, in the previous article said that Eugene Hamilton came to him with some work he wanted done and he agreed to do it as Hamilton was paying.
Isaac claimed that Hamilton was bringing in other work from the Party and only did it because he respected him and knew him from Cayon, but eventually had to end that process because they were not paying.
However, the men said that is not so as the Party produces campaign materials for everyone.
“We do a global marketing approach for everybody and individually you can do more if you wish to. However, we will not let the candidate be embarrassed if he go and do something he cannot pay for; he will appeal to us immediately but that is not the case,” they said.
When SKNVibes spoke to Isaac he said that he has been advised by legal counsel to be mum from hereon on the matter.
“My understanding of that is I shouldn’t have nothing else to say pertaining to the matter. However, I’m a sensible man, I’m not a foolish guy. What I presented was a bill, a balance of a bill, monies owed, the cheques are irrelevant and have nothing to do with the subject matter, they just need to settle their bill and that’s all I have to say.
“If you examine the crew, they don’t care, and they not interested in what’s going on, and this is why it is taking them so long to find out, it is quite strange it had to take them two weeks to find out if they had paid me. That means they ain’t sure… that mean they ain’t know what they doing,” he said.
Isaac said he is not a liar and has no reason to lie.
“I don’t tell lies and I don’t plan to tell lies on them and it’s not fair, this is another job again to get me money. I done work and I have to be working now to get me money, it’s not right,” he said.
Isaac said that he has worked for larger companies that have owed more money than the political party who have asked him to work with them and give them time to pay.
“I can’t work no more with PAM, this is negligence. They really have no intentions of paying me; all who I have worked for in the past they have paid me… maybe not in full but they have paid me. PAM will not be an exception.
Isaac in a previous interview told SKNVibes that the Party owed EC$124 000 for work he did for the 2004 elections including branding political boards, making signs, flags, banners and that they also owed EC$32 000 for work done for the 2010 elections for branding political boards, making signs, flags, banners etc.
Isaac also claimed that as a result of the Party refusing to honour their obligations, he had to let go 15 of his staff members and was unable to meet his financial obligation of loans that he took to do the job for the Party and as a result, he suffered from financial difficulties to the point where his utilities were disconnected.
