Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Min­is­ter Win­ston "Gyp­sy" Pe­ters is steer­ing clear of the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing the award of schol­ar­ships un­der the Fi­nan­cial As­sis­tance Fund. Pe­ters, speak­ing yes­ter­day with re­porters at Our La­dy of Per­pet­u­al Help Ro­man Catholic Church, Har­ris Prom­e­nade, San Fer­nan­do, said the fund no longer ex­ist­ed since his min­istry was a new one. The church held a spe­cial mass to com­mem­o­rate the 255th an­niver­sary of Ro­man Catholic Mis­sion in San Fer­nan­do. The mass was of­fi­ci­at­ed by Arch­bish­op Ed­ward Gilbert. Pe­ters said: "I nev­er had any­thing to do with that fund be­cause my min­istry is a brand new min­istry called, the Min­istry of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, which has noth­ing to do with schol­ar­ships. It's a new min­istry, as I said it has noth­ing to do with schol­ar­ships now."

Al­le­ga­tions of bias and dis­crim­i­na­tion in the award of schol­ar­ships un­der the funds have been lev­elled against the for­mer PNM gov­ern­ment. For­mer min­is­ter of Cul­ture and Gen­der Af­fairs, Joan Yuille Williams, in a state­ment, de­nounced the al­le­ga­tions. She said it was "nev­er a schol­ar­ship fund." She al­so threat­ened to take le­gal ac­tion in the mat­ter. The is­sue of the schol­ar­ship fund was raised last week by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar in Par­lia­ment. Pe­ters as­sured that the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA) South Cam­pus will open as sched­uled next Mon­day.

"We will be meet­ing the dead­line for Oc­to­ber 31. I was there a cou­ple of weeks ago and we were 95 per cent com­plete. We will be meet­ing the dead­line." Con­struc­tion of the fa­cil­i­ty be­gan in 2008 at an ap­proved es­ti­mat­ed cost of $252 mil­lion. How­ev­er, Min­is­ter of Hous­ing and the En­vi­ron­ment Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, who toured the fa­cil­i­ty in June, said it will be com­plet­ed at a cost of $350 mil­lion. The fa­cil­i­ty is be­ing built by Shang­hai Con­struc­tion Group. Pe­ters said work was con­tin­u­ing on the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah and Car­ni­val lovers could look for­ward to new in­no­va­tions in 2012.