More state entities cancel Christmas functions as government cuts non-essential spending

The Gov­ern­ment has or­dered the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go to scrap its Christ­mas and end-of-year events, tight­en­ing con­trols on pub­lic spend­ing as state en­ti­ties, in­clud­ing Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um, move to can­cel their own func­tions.

Her­itage ad­vised em­ploy­ees that its “Christ­mas at Her­itage” event, which had been sched­uled for De­cem­ber 10 at the Pointe-A-Pierre Staff Club, will no longer take place. The com­pa­ny thanked staff for their un­der­stand­ing. Sources have al­so told Guardian Me­dia Na­tion­al En­er­gy and Na­tion Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) will not host end of year func­tions.

UTT was for­mal­ly in­struct­ed not to pro­ceed with any Christ­mas or end-of-year func­tions fund­ed by the State. In a De­cem­ber 5 let­ter to act­ing pres­i­dent Pro­fes­sor Re­an Ma­haraj, Min­is­ter of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing Prakash Per­sad wrote that “Gov­ern­ment fund­ing should not be utilised to sup­port ex­pens­es as­so­ci­at­ed with Christ­mas and/or End-of-Year func­tions” be­cause of the cur­rent eco­nom­ic cli­mate. He said the mea­sure was in­tend­ed to sup­port “pru­dent fi­nan­cial man­age­ment and re­spon­si­ble use of pub­lic re­sources.”

How­ev­er, Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Bar­ry Padarath said on Sun­day the wider pull­back is not the re­sult of a gov­ern­ment-wide di­rec­tive. He told Guardian Me­dia min­istries are in­stead re­spond­ing to the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic cir­cum­stances and a man­date to re­duce ex­ces­sive spend­ing.

“This is not a de­mand or an in­struc­tion from the Gov­ern­ment per se, but rather in­di­vid­ual min­is­ters are be­ing guid­ed by the cur­rent eco­nom­ic cli­mate that the coun­try is fac­ing, to­geth­er with a man­date to curb ex­ces­sive un­nec­es­sary spend­ing,” he said.

Padarath al­so con­firmed that his min­istry held its staff Christ­mas event on Fri­day. He said the cel­e­bra­tion fo­cused on em­ploy­ee ap­pre­ci­a­tion and re­duced costs by us­ing artistes who fall un­der the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties.

“What I’ve sought to do is fo­cus more on the em­ploy­ees of the min­istry and state en­ter­pris­es in terms of pro­vid­ing food sup­port etcetera, rather than hav­ing ex­ces­sive par­ties with al­co­hol con­sump­tion and that sort of a thing,” he said.

He added that his col­leagues were re­think­ing tra­di­tion­al Christ­mas cel­e­bra­tions and shift­ing to­wards sup­port that lasts be­yond a sin­gle event.