NEARLY two months after the highly controversial Bahamas Junkanoo Carnival was held in the country, FNM Deputy Leader Peter Turnquest questioned why the government had yet to produce the festival’s financial performance report.
The East Grand Bahama MP said this was the height of “negligence, incompetence and lack of transparency.” He told The Tribune that while he did not want to delve into speculation, the delay of the festival’s accounting raised concerns over whether some of its funding might have been misappropriated.
Meanwhile Bahamas National Festival Commission Chairman Paul Major insisted that officials were working on the report, ensuring that all of the accounting and numbers were correct. He said it was his hope that a report would be finished and made public by sometime next week.
“It was a great time and there were lots of tourists here,” Mr. Major said when he was contacted yesterday. “But they are working on the report, but it is all about the numbers as you would know.”
Despite this, Mr. Turnquest said someone should still be made to answer Bahamians regarding how the millions invested in the 2014 and 2015 festivals were spent.
“We haven’t gotten any numbers this year,” he said. “I see it as the height of negligence, incompetence and lack of transparency.
“I am sure given the professionals that are involved it would have enabled them to produce the reports by now. There is really no reason why we shouldn’t have gotten it.
“This is something that the government invested (millions) of the Bahamian people’s money. We deserve a response.”
He continued: “A reasonable question is and while I don’t want to speculate that monies were misappropriated, the fact remains that monies have been spent and someone should be made to answer the question over what was done with it.
“We know what we spent but here we are having no idea what was generated.”
“We are approaching a third one and as the people elected to Parliament we should know about the supposed break even and what the yield was.”
Bahamas Junkanoo Carnival was held in Nassau from May 7 to 9 and in Grand Bahama from April 15 to 16.
While it was dubbed a “fusion of global sounds” with a combination of local and international performers, the festival attracted backlash over the taxpayer dollars used to fund it and the use of international singers instead of all local performers.
In April, Mr. Major said the government would spend about $7m to host the festival.
The performance lineup for the Nassau leg included Trinidadian soca queen Destra, Grammy award winning Haitian hip-hop artist Wyclef Jean and Jamaican reggae star Tarrus Riley.
Mr. Major said the artists would be paid at their international market rate: about $30,000 for Destra and about $70,000 for Wyclef.
The month before, Tourism Minister Obie Wilchcombe told The Tribune the government’s carnival budget would be “around $3 million”; however he did add that “work on the final number is still being done.”
Last year, the government spent $11.3m on the inaugural festival, going over its initial budget of $9m.
By Khrisna Virgil, Tribune Staff Reporter
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