Former minister of culture Stephen Lashley has slammed the non-payment of artistes for the work they did both during Crop Over 2025 and CARIFESTA XV in August.
Referring to the Back Page story in Thursday’s Daily Nation which highlighted complaints from cultural practitioners that they were being forced to wait months for payments after they had provided their services to the National Cultural Foundation (NCF), Lashley said: “This demonstrates that Government is keen on paying only lip service to the nation’s artistes but deep down they have no respect for the sector.”
He said with Crop Over having ended four months ago, the NCF “is still offering poor excuses why persons have not yet been paid. It is deplorable”.
In the article, NCF chief executive officer Carol Roberts said the payment process was expected to be completed by the end of this week.
“We’d have paid the vast majority. We paid even more over the [last] weekend and we are working to ensure that the last set of those payments will be processed by the end of this week,” she said, citing a lengthy payroll process.
However, Lashley, who served under the Democratic Labour Party Government, said it was “shameful” that people had not yet received their money after working in what he called “an extremely poorly executed CARIFESTA”.
He called on the Government to stop wasting time and
pay the artistes who worked and have bills to pay.
The attorney also said it was a disgrace that the Government was yet to give an account for the financial management of CARIFESTA XV and the country still does not know how much the festival cost the taxpaying public.
“Obviously the nondisclosure of a CARIFESTA budget and the failure by the Government to state the cost of hosting the festival, has now been further compounded by unsuspecting artistes feeling the effects of poor planning” he said, adding that “many of these artistes opt to suffer in silence as they fear political victimisation. This is the country we are living in.”
He also called on the Government to compensate artistes and workers who suffered injuries.
“We saw in the media, and it has also been brought to my attention, that there are persons who have received injuries while performing work on behalf of the NCF . . . . These persons are in vulnerable positions and would be hesitant to seek legal advice. The Government has a clear legal and moral obligation to not only pay their medical bills but to adequately compensate them,” he said.
(MB)
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