By Robert Andre Emmanuel
With complaints of sound issues and other technical difficulties during Carnival 2024, the Festivals Commission will be reviewing the quality of work of its service providers before it begins distribution of the remaining monies owed to them.
This year, the government sought to avoid persistent complaints of monies owed to vendors for lengthy periods by paying 75 percent upfront.
However, the remaining 25 percent agreed with the Festivals Commission is now under review to ensure that the quality of service such as sound, lighting and security met the standards expected by the Commission, according to Creative Industries Minister Daryll Matthew.
“They will be paid in short order; clearly we have to ensure that the service that we received warrants a full payment. If you are a person who has built a home or if you’ve done any construction, there’s usually something called a retention to ensure that before you make your final payment that you, as the customer, are satisfied with the quality of work that you received,” Matthew told a press conference yesterday.
During the Junior Calypso Monarch competition this year, sound issues were so persistent that two contestants were forced to redo their performances multiple times, affecting the quality they were able to produce.
According to Festivals Commission Chair Elizabeth Mahkoul, the issue was found to be with the sound engineering.
“As stakeholders and Antiguans, it’s important to recognise and put our festival at the forefront of anything and…I think that a lot more effort should have been done to make sure that the national festival, Carnival, is the centre of their attention.
“Service providers are stretching themselves too thin, and it’s not that we didn’t try, we spoke every day, trying to resolve the issues. We heard different excuses and then I received a few reports from a few engineers after they did the shows.
“Then an executive decision was made on the morning of Breakfast Fete; we brought in independent engineers, and we contracted some equipment from them, and I think everyone could agree that the Soca Monarch sound was a lot better than the other shows.
“So, we recognise that maybe we did not get the best service that we could have or should have gotten,” Makhoul stated.
Over the years, Carnival shows have frequently started later than advertised, with some pointing to the late sound and other equipment checks done 30 minutes or closer to the scheduled time.
Minister Matthew said that this was part of the review process.
“It cannot continue to be that you pay persons for particular quality service, a particular timeliness of service, they get paid, they do not deliver on either the quality or timeliness of their service but we, the promoters, get beaten with many stripes by the public,” Minister Matthew noted.
