I had no role in the allocation of Carifesta X funds—Dharamlall

Dec 11, 2015 News

Amidst recent claims that he had management oversight of spending and procurements for Carifesta X, Nigel Dharamlall, who served as the Chief Executive Officer of the Carifesta Secretariat, says that this is simply untrue.
“There were a few Directors for Carifesta; there was the CEO, the Artistic Director and Logistic Director. We all reported to the Permanent Secretary.”
Dharamlall was at the time responding to an article published in this newspaper which saw Dr. Paloma Mohamed stating that the CEO, was the one responsible for the allocation and disbursement of funds.
Dr. Mohamed, said Dharamlall, reported to the Permanent Secretary through him, “So inevitably she did not know what my roles were. As I was CEO, she would think that I had financial control, but I did not. I was aware of what was taking place, but I had no say in who got paid and what they got paid.”
Dharamlall said that he only began to work with the secretariat from mid-March to mid- September 2010, after being awarded a six-month contract. He stated that at the time of him becoming CEO, there was already a secretariat in place, along with logistics and artistic directors. As such, expenditures were said to have been executed before he began work at the secretariat.
“In so far as I am aware, the financial arrangements for Carifesta were handled by the Ministry directly. I had absolutely no say in how money was spent or who it was given to,” Dharamlall said.
His responsibility, he explained, was to ensure that activities were executed properly.
“A lot of the infrastructure work that had to be done was done at the ministerial level—work such as (preparation of) National Park and Camp Ayanganna. Physical things were overseen by a technical team which at the time was overseen by Mr. Walter Willis. My job was to facilitate the execution of the festival.”
Inevitably, he said, he holds responsibility as he was the CEO, but “I can’t tell you things I don’t know about. I know we had to execute contracts for transportation and I know the logistics director would engage providers – I wouldn’t approve, but I would recommend payments to the PS…Procurement was done by the Ministry. Everything had to be sent through the tender board.”
Previous Minister of Culture, Dr Frank Anthony confirmed Dharamlall’s claim of not being responsible for the procurement, allocation and disbursement of monies. This, he said, was the responsibility of the now deceased P.S. of the Ministry at the time, Keith Booker. When asked what his response to the Carifesta Audit findings was, Anthony stated that he could not give one at the moment as he has not seen it.
Dharamlall said that he often feels sorry for those who have not been paid.
“I know that these people did work, but it’s up to the Ministry to pay them.”
He added that he sometimes feels bad as “people think I was solely responsible for these things, but when I came to Carifesta I had a mandate, and according to the mandate, that’s what I did.”
He stated that in the interest of ensuring accountability and transparency, which is necessary, he is happy that the audit has been done. He added that based on “what I am reading in the media, I think that the Ministry got value for their money. I don’t think there was any level of corruption or monies given away.”
When it was pointed out that there were several instances of unaccounted monies and inflated cash book entries, Dharamlall said that he was never aware of that. “You would never find my signature on any of those books.”

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I had no role in the allocation of Carifesta X funds—Dharamlall

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