Culture minister in the Freundel Stuart administration, Stephen Lashley, accused the government of “scandalous” secrecy over the true cost of hosting CARIFESTA XV.
In an interview with Barbados TODAY on Monday, Lashley commended regional artists for their outstanding creativity during the ten-day cultural showcase. But, he said, the government’s failure to disclose the festival’s budget or final expenditure was a betrayal of its own stated commitment to transparency and accountability.
He said: “CARIFESTA is really a grand showing of what the region has to offer in terms of the creative sector. And I believe that each CARIFESTA, artists and cultural performers in the region give of their best. I have actually been to the CARIFESTA in Haiti and, of course, we hosted the CARIFESTA in 2017, and this year I’ve been to several of the events. The content is always rich in creativity. You really have to salute the artists and those cultural workers who really provide exemplary showings for the public”.
Lashley declared that the true stars of CARIFESTA were the practitioners themselves: “I would like to compliment all of those practitioners both in Barbados and across the Caribbean who continue to turn up for CARIFESTA and give of their utmost. I believe that the region certainly gets a glimpse at CARIFESTA of some of the phenomenal work that our cultural practitioners are doing, and we have to salute them for that.”
However, he highlighted the absence of financial disclosure: “The government has not or did not come to the country and indicate what budget it was working with. And having not done that, I’ve seen a story in another media house indicating that we should not be looking at the cost, we should be looking at the benefits. But I don’t know that you can look at one or the other; you have to compare cost and benefit.
“It is a natural call to find out what it is you have budgeted, and to match that against what you spent. And I think that that’s a failing on the part of the government…. Nobody knows what you spent, not only what you spent, but what the budget was in relation to CARIFESTA. And that is not proper planning. That’s not proper accountability…. That is scandalous.”
While acknowledging that Barbadians enjoyed many of the events, Lashley said the government appeared more intent on “dazzling” the public than exercising fiscal restraint.
Drawing comparisons with the 2017 festival hosted under a Democratic Labour Party government at a cost of $8 million, Lashley added: “In our case… we opted to control our spend by virtue of the venues. We would have done the refurbishment of the Queen’s Park buildings. And then we spent quite a bit of focus on improving existing facilities such as our schools, the performing arts spaces in our schools, at the polytechnic, at the community college and so on. So … we were mindful of the fact that you couldn’t jump and spend a whole set of millions of dollars just like that. And we wanted to establish, leave the legacy of improving existing facilities.”
He argued that the government instead ploughed money into costly temporary structures at Waterford and Newton. “The whole facility was a rush job, and we were able to get through it. But to me, the cost of getting through it was enormous,” he said.
He said the government appeared unprepared, forcing rushed, expensive works at new sites.
“My concern is that when you have to rush like that, you are going to be paying premium dollars, and premium taxpayers’ funds are going to be utilised in doing what ordinarily should not have been that kind of situation,” Lashley said.
The former culture minister insisted that his criticism was directed at the government, not the festival itself.
“It is really a travesty that up to now, nothing has been said about what has been spent,” he said. “It can’t be proper accountability for such a major festival not to be able to have said… what its budget was that was approved. And now that CARIFESTA has ended, it is under obligation to come to the country and explain why it never told the country in the first place how much was being spent.
“This government needs to come to the country, and I believe they should have come a long time ago. It talks about financial accountability all the time. You cannot evade reporters’ questions in relation to spend when in fact you’re dealing with public monies.”
When Barbados TODAY sought details about the cost of the CARIFESTA Grand Market, the Barbados Tourism Investment Inc. directed inquiries to the local organising committee. Calls to the festival’s director, Chief Executive Officer of the National Cultural Foundation, Carol Roberts, went unanswered. Throughout the planning and staging of the event, neither Roberts nor ministerial officials gave the media any answers to questions about the festival’s price tag.
sheriabrathwaite@barbadostoday.bb
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