Yup Life director to critics: Let us redeem ourselves

As the events man­age­ment and lifestyle brand Yup Life con­tin­ues to face crit­i­cism from dis­sat­is­fied fete pa­trons on so­cial me­dia, the com­pa­ny's di­rec­tor Shadeed Ab­dul­lah is urg­ing dis­ap­point­ed at­ten­dees to give them a chance to re­deem them­selves fol­low­ing the events of the Fes­ti­val of Colour (FOC): The Awak­en­ing on Mon­day morn­ing. 

The J'Ou­vert-style par­ty which took place at Pier Two, Ch­aguara­mas, be­gin­ning at 3 am and was sched­uled to end at 9 am, how­ev­er po­lice and fire of­fi­cials on du­ty at the venue end­ed the event at around 7 am, ow­ing to a large in­flux of peo­ple try­ing to en­ter the venue. 

Re­ports es­ti­mat­ed that close to 6,500 peo­ple tried to gain en­try to the fete's grounds which were on­ly ap­proved for a ca­pac­i­ty of 4000 pa­trons. 

In a post on their of­fi­cial so­cial me­dia ac­counts on Tues­day, Yup Life has apol­o­gised to pa­trons for the in­con­ve­nience, out­lin­ing sev­er­al chal­lenges faced on the day of the event in­clud­ing tech­ni­cal chal­lenges in scan­ning dig­i­tal tick­ets from pa­trons seek­ing to en­ter. 

The brand al­so an­nounced that a sub­se­quent event, FOC: Re­demp­tion, would be held on No­vem­ber 9, as part of at­tempts to rec­on­cile with dis­grun­tled pa­trons. 

How­ev­er sev­er­al so­cial me­dia users were crit­i­cal of the com­pa­ny's ap­proach and in­stead called for re­funds to be is­sued to tick­et-hold­ers who were not al­lowed to en­ter the venue. 

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia Ltd's ques­tions via email on Thurs­day af­ter­noon, Ab­dul­lah ac­knowl­edged that while he ex­pect­ed doubt and hes­i­tance from pa­trons to­wards the sched­uled event, as­sess­ments were be­ing done to pre­vent a re­peat of chal­lenges faced. 

"We have iden­ti­fied some pain points and know that we have to rec­ti­fy them for this new event. We are ask­ing peo­ple to give us a chance to show them and to re­deem our­selves. 

"The is­sues faced were be­yond any­thing that had to do with ca­pac­i­ty and while we are con­duct­ing a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion and post-mortem, there are some things that we are un­able to speak on pub­licly. 

"The busi­ness of events is tough, but we love what we do and we have a strong fol­low­ing that has sup­port­ed us through­out the time that we have been do­ing it." 

Footage of un­ruly pa­trons fight­ing and in­volved in heat­ed con­fronta­tions was shared on so­cial me­dia as they left the venue on Mon­day, prompt­ing crit­i­cism from Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who urged peo­ple in­ca­pable of be­hav­ing to stay at home. 

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions on these in­stances of vi­o­lence, Ab­dul­lah main­tained that the safe­ty of com­mit­tee mem­bers and pa­trons was a ma­jor pri­or­i­ty for Yup Life, not­ing that the brand would con­tin­ue to meet and en­gage with the TTPS on a clos­er lev­el. 

"There is an op­por­tu­ni­ty here for us to learn and grow even more and the po­lice and rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties have the ca­pa­bil­i­ties and knowl­edge to teach us even more. 

"We are pre­pared to crit­i­cal­ly as­sess Mon­day's events and take ad­vice from a se­cu­ri­ty per­spec­tive so that what we ex­pe­ri­enced does not oc­cur again or that in­stances of vi­o­lence are min­i­mized." 

He added that the com­pa­ny has been aware of the feed­back pro­vid­ed and is will­ing to in­tro­duce more strin­gent mea­sures as they progress. 

West­ern Di­vi­sion po­lice said while sev­er­al peo­ple were de­tained fol­low­ing fights af­ter the event on Mon­day, they were not charged and re­leased short­ly af­ter they were re­moved from the scene for their safe­ty and the safe­ty of oth­ers. 

Of­fi­cers not­ed that this was done ow­ing to con­straints of re­sources with­in the Care­nage Po­lice Sta­tion dis­trict which has over­sight for Ch­aguara­mas where the in­ci­dent oc­curred.