Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Josi­ah Austin has de­fend­ed the cor­po­ra­tion’s re­cent spend­ing on In­de­pen­dence Day cel­e­bra­tions, back-to-school dri­ves, and oth­er so­cial sup­port pro­grammes, stress­ing that most of the fund­ing came from pri­vate spon­sor­ship and in­ter­nal­ly raised rev­enue rather than cen­tral gov­ern­ment al­lo­ca­tions. In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Austin said about three-quar­ters of the costs were cov­ered by spon­sor­ship, with the bal­ance com­ing from the cor­po­ra­tion’s own rev­enue-gen­er­at­ing ac­tiv­i­ties.

“Every cor­po­ra­tion is re­spon­si­ble for rais­ing its own rev­enue, and we raised a lot this year,” Austin ex­plained.