Leacock: No pay delay for local artistes

Signed, sealed, delivered. That’s how Chairman, Tobago Festivals Commission, George Leacock summed up payments to local artistes who performed at the Tobago Jazz Experience last weekend.

Leacock said on Tuesday that only three cheques were left to be collected at the Commission’s Scarborough office.

“Some people got their cheques before they went on stage, and everybody else signed,” he said at a press conference yesterday.

“There was somebody sitting backstage with the cheques, and when (the artistes) signed, they received their cheques…”

Asked if the free Jazz in the East event at the Speyside Recreation Ground could have an entrance fee in the future, Leacock said this “seems a logical and reasonable next step”, and the Tobago Jazz Experience needs to be looked at from a bigger perspective.

“…If the overall effect is to move the kinds of numbers of people in Tobago that we want to move, I can see the possibility of there being a cost attached, but the cost attached on its own will not lead to absolute recovery of the cost of staging (the event).”