Padarath fires back at Young over Christmas events

An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­[email protected]

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

In a force­ful Face­book post yes­ter­day, Padarath de­scribed Young’s re­marks as “shame­less” and ac­cused him of politi­cis­ing pub­lic ser­vants.

“In his usu­al dis­gust­ing and abra­sive at­ti­tude to­wards pub­lic ser­vants, I have tak­en note of com­ments made on so­cial me­dia by MP Stu­art Young,” he wrote.

Padarath clar­i­fied the arrange­ments for the events, stress­ing that no gov­ern­ment funds were used to pay per­form­ers.

“The per­for­mances at the OPM and MPU Christ­mas events 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. They gra­cious­ly agreed to per­form, and I have con­firmed this with the CEO of TSTT,” he said.

He fur­ther re­vealed that min­is­ters per­son­al­ly con­tributed to the events. “In both in­stances at MPU and OPM, min­is­ters as­sist­ed by dip­ping in­to their own pock­ets to sub­sidise food and bev­er­ages at the events,” Padarath added.

Ques­tion­ing Young’s crit­i­cism, he asked: “Is he say­ing that the state can­not pur­chase a rea­son­able meal for staff who work long hours, in­clud­ing week­ends, leav­ing their fam­i­lies be­hind?”

Young, a for­mer Prime Min­is­ter, has ac­cused the UNC gov­ern­ment of caus­ing wide­spread job loss­es among vul­ner­a­ble cit­i­zens. In a Face­book post, he said peo­ple de­pen­dent on CEPEP, URP, Re­for­esta­tion, HDC, and oth­er con­tract po­si­tions across the pub­lic ser­vice have lost their jobs since the UNC took of­fice.

He ar­gued that min­istries and state com­pa­nies were in­struct­ed to re­duce ex­pen­di­ture, lead­ing sev­er­al en­ti­ties—in­clud­ing rev­enue-gen­er­at­ing ones such as NGC and Her­itage—to can­cel end-of-year events.

“Some in gov­ern­ment, how­ev­er, ap­pear not to have re­ceived that di­rec­tive and are hold­ing ex­trav­a­gant, vul­gar, and ex­pen­sive func­tions and par­ties,” Young said. He added that such dis­plays “rub con­tempt and dis­re­gard in the faces of those who at this time do not even know where their next meal will come from.”

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr. Bish­nu Ra­goonath told Guardian Me­dia that if the events were fund­ed pri­vate­ly or through spon­sor­ship, Young’s crit­i­cism would car­ry less weight.

“If Bar­ry is say­ing that no­body paid for his min­istry’s event ex­cept him, then there is no con­cern here from a po­lit­i­cal point of view,” he said.

Dr Ra­goonath added that if no state fund­ing was used for the OPM and MPU Christ­mas events, and all ex­pens­es came from spon­sor­ships, pro bono con­tri­bu­tions, or per­son­al funds, then the pol­i­cy of not us­ing pub­lic mon­ey for such cel­e­bra­tions holds. How­ev­er, if ev­i­dence shows oth­er­wise, it could be­come a po­lit­i­cal is­sue due to po­ten­tial dou­ble stan­dards.

Last week­end, Padarath told Guardian Me­dia that, in light of pre­vail­ing eco­nom­ic chal­lenges, gov­ern­ment min­istries and state en­ter­pris­es are im­ple­ment­ing mea­sures to curb non-es­sen­tial spend­ing dur­ing the fes­tive sea­son.

“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.

“Some of us have there­fore tak­en the de­ci­sion to curb. So, it is not a sit­u­a­tion of not hav­ing Christ­mas par­ties, but rather to curb some of the ex­ces­sive ex­pen­di­ture,” the min­is­ter ex­plained.