The Gov­ern­ment has or­dered the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go to scrap its Christ­mas and end-of-year events, tight­en­ing con­trols on pub­lic spend­ing as state en­ti­ties, in­clud­ing Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um, move to can­cel their own func­tions.

Her­itage ad­vised em­ploy­ees that its “Christ­mas at Her­itage” event, which had been sched­uled for De­cem­ber 10 at the Pointe-A-Pierre Staff Club, will no longer take place. The com­pa­ny thanked staff for their un­der­stand­ing. Sources have al­so told Guardian Me­dia Na­tion­al En­er­gy and Na­tion Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) will not host end of year func­tions.

UTT was for­mal­ly in­struct­ed not to pro­ceed with any Christ­mas or end-of-year func­tions fund­ed by the State. In a De­cem­ber 5 let­ter to act­ing pres­i­dent Pro­fes­sor Re­an Ma­haraj, Min­is­ter of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing Prakash Per­sad wrote that “Gov­ern­ment fund­ing should not be utilised to sup­port ex­pens­es as­so­ci­at­ed with Christ­mas and/or End-of-Year func­tions” be­cause of the cur­rent eco­nom­ic cli­mate. He said the mea­sure was in­tend­ed to sup­port “pru­dent fi­nan­cial man­age­ment and re­spon­si­ble use of pub­lic re­sources.”