Three months after CARIFESTA XV several cultural practitioners hired for the festival say they are still waiting to be paid.

They said the National Cultural Foundation (NCF) has failed to clarify the status of the outstanding payments from the August event noting that when they managed to reach the accounts department they were constantly told payments were “being processed”.

Some of the artistes, artisans and performers also disclosed they were still awaiting payment for services from June and July during the full swing of the Crop Over Festival.

When contacted for comment yesterday, Chief Executive Officer of the NCF Carol Roberts said significant progress was made over the weekend to compensate those owed for CARIFESTA, with the payment process expected to be completed by the end of the week.

“We’d have paid the vast majority. We paid even more over the weekend and we are working to ensure that the last set of those payments will be processed by the end of this week,” she said.

Citing a lengthy payroll process, she thanked those waiting on payments for their patience and understanding.

“Each invoice we have to validate. Sometimes the invoices did not have on correct information.

Sometimes the invoice numbers were duplicated. So it was a long and labourious process, but I am confident and comfortable that by the end of this week, we would have paid all of the invoices that we have in hand,” she said.

Unacceptable

Justin Poleon, a dancer, singer and actor best known for his role in the Disney Lion King production in Madrid, Spain between 2019 to 2024, said during Carifesta, he taught a workshop, danced, participated in the opening ceremony and the big conversation series. Since the closing of the event, he said he has been calling and sending emails to the NCF on payments due to him and other colleagues without success and only to hear the payments were being processed.

Poleon said he was also hired throughout Crop Over and, among other things, choreographed the opening ceremony for Junior Kadooment and received payments at the end of August following the closing of CARIFESTA XV.

“I think that’s absolutely unacceptable when you call the National Cultural Foundation. You’re supposed to be supporting and developing culture and arts but the artistes are not even being paid.

“I know exactly what the standard is abroad and what is expected . . . We have continued to be slapped in the face with these ridiculous payment times,” he said, recognising their contribution to arts and culture.

Poleon noted that late payments were especially difficult for practitioners who were neither paid for rehearsals nor compensated for injuries or accidents.

Actor, writer and visual artist Nala said he had several bad experiences and delayed payments without explanation with Government-related jobs.

He attributed it to a fundamental misunderstanding of how the arts work, along with a lack of respect for the practitioners.

Nala said he had refused to do further work with Government entities and found the artistes’ attitude of quietly waiting doing nothing “distasteful”.

“If I owe you $1 000 on Tuesday and I don’t pay you till Tuesday next year, the value of the $1 000 is seriously diminished because you would have been borrowing. The longer you wait for payment, the less value the payment has,” he said.

Financial stresses

One practitioner said the delays contributed to a number of financial and personal stresses.

“At this point now this is three months that I haven’t been paid and then so many different things went wrong between then and it’s a case where I had to depend on friends and family just to be able to survive.

“You’re facing eviction and bills and debt and you have fixed expenses you have to cover and people are not telling you anything but making you wait two or three months for your payment . . . . You can’t tell the debt collectors ‘it coming, just allow me for a little bit.’” The artistes noted that with CARIFESTA coming on the heels of Crop Over meant a number of artistes and artisans had to abandon other commitments to be prepared and that took some of them to the point of burnout as they worked day and night to accommodate the narrow window to be ready.

Other artistes spoke anonymously to this newspaper about the issue which they said they hoped would be resolved soon.

“There are people whose feet were bruised from dancing on ground that was incorrect, dressmakers whose machines broke from overuse and people whose throats were gone because they weren’t mic’d up,” one person stated.

Another affected individual added: “They will say you have the starving artiste mentality but no one respects the artistes to pay them timely . . . . It’s a case of we don’t have conversations. They are just telling us to do a service and they will get back to us whenever they feel comfortable.

Responding to concerns about lengthy delays in payment for NCF-related projects, the CEO said the Foundation would take steps to ensure they align with best practices in the future.

“A lot of the lessons coming out of CARIFESTA isn’t only as it relates to what we’ve learned in terms of the sector, but also what we have had to learn in terms of processes and operations and what not.

“So we are not unfeeling or unmindful of what are the expectations of the sector and how we need to pivot and get our processes in line with international best practices going forward,” Roberts said. (JRN)