Padarath defends hosting of Christmas events

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath has hit back at Port of Spain North/St Ann’s West MP Stu­art Young over crit­i­cism of Christ­mas events held at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter (OPM) and the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties (MPU).

In a Face­book post, Padarath de­scribed Young’s com­ments as “shame­less” and said, “In his usu­al dis­gust­ing and abra­sive at­ti­tude to­wards pub­lic ser­vants, I have tak­en note of com­ments made on so­cial me­dia by MP Stu­art Young.”

Padarath ex­plained the arrange­ments for the events, say­ing, “The per­for­mances at Christ­mas events at the OPM and MPU were done by artistes con­tract­ed by the PNM un­der TSTT as brand am­bas­sadors. No funds from the OPM or MPU were paid to the artistes. In­stead, they were asked to per­form since they were al­ready brand am­bas­sadors for the state. They gra­cious­ly agreed. I have con­firmed this with the CEO of TSTT.”

He added that min­is­ters per­son­al­ly con­tributed to the events, stat­ing, “In both in­stances of MPU and OPM, Min­is­ters as­sist­ed by dip­ping in­to their own pock­ets to sub­sidise food and bev­er­age at the event.”

Padarath al­so said, “MP Young is shame­less­ly at­tempt­ing to play pol­i­tics with pub­lic ser­vants. Is he say­ing that the state can­not pur­chase a rea­son­able meal for staff who work long hours, week­ends, leav­ing their fam­i­lies un­done?”

He de­fend­ed the gov­ern­ment’s ap­proach, say­ing, “I know these things are strange to the for­mer PM in terms of car­ing for the or­di­nary man and woman out there, but this was the ap­proach we took to ap­pre­ci­ate those that work with us.”