Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

As events man­age­ment and lifestyle com­pa­ny Yup Life con­tin­ues to face crit­i­cism from dis­sat­is­fied Fes­ti­val of Colour (FOC) fete pa­trons on so­cial me­dia, the com­pa­ny’s di­rec­tor Shadeed Ab­dul­lah is urg­ing dis­ap­point­ed at­ten­dees to give them a chance to re­deem them­selves fol­low­ing the events of Mon­day.

The J’Ou­vert-style break­fast par­ty, which took place at Pier Two, Ch­aguara­mas, be­gan at 3 am and was sched­uled to end at 9 am. How­ev­er, po­lice and fire of­fi­cials on du­ty at the venue end­ed the event around 7 am, due to a large in­flux of peo­ple try­ing to en­ter the venue.

Re­ports es­ti­mat­ed that close to 6,500 peo­ple tried to gain en­try to the fete’s grounds, which were on­ly ap­proved for a ca­pac­i­ty of 4000 pa­trons.

Yup Life has since apol­o­gised to pa­trons for the in­ci­dent, out­lin­ing sev­er­al chal­lenges faced on the day of the event, in­clud­ing tech­ni­cal chal­lenges in scan­ning dig­i­tal tick­ets.

The brand al­so an­nounced that a sub­se­quent free event, FOC: Re­demp­tion, would be held on No­vem­ber 9.

How­ev­er, sev­er­al so­cial me­dia users have in­stead called for re­funds for tick­et-hold­ers who were not al­lowed to en­ter the venue.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, Ab­dul­lah ac­knowl­edged the crit­i­cisms and said as­sess­ments were be­ing done to pre­vent a re­peat of such events.

He said, “The is­sues faced were be­yond any­thing that had to do with ca­pac­i­ty, and while we are con­duct­ing a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion and post-mortem, there are some things that we are un­able to speak on pub­licly.”

Footage of un­ruly pa­trons fight­ing and in­volved in heat­ed con­fronta­tions was shared on so­cial me­dia as they left the venue on Mon­day, prompt­ing crit­i­cism from Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who urged peo­ple in­ca­pable of be­hav­ing to stay at home.

West­ern Di­vi­sion po­lice said while sev­er­al peo­ple were de­tained fol­low­ing fights af­ter the event, they were not charged and re­leased short­ly af­ter.

Of­fi­cers not­ed that this was done ow­ing to con­straints of re­sources with­in the Care­nage Po­lice Sta­tion dis­trict, which has over­sight for Ch­aguara­mas, where the in­ci­dent oc­curred.