Shaggy: We will never give money to Gov't

Grammy-Award winning recording artiste Orville Burrell has expressed doubt about hosting another Shaggy Make a Difference Foundation (SMADF) benevolent concert because of the controversy surrounding the $100 million raised in the last staging in 2018.

At a press conference on Monday, Burrell, who performs under the name ‘Shaggy’, told journalists that the biennial concert was now a “harder sell”.

He also disclosed that financial backers of his foundation had insisted that it should not surrender authority over the funds.

“We will never give money to Government,” Burrell said emphatically at the AC Hotel in Kingston.

The star-studded concert featured local and international acts and garnered donations to purchase beds for an intensive care unit (ICU) at Bustamante Hospital for Children.

However, no disbursement has been made four years after the concert. The foundation had reported that the hospital did not have designated space to accommodate the beds.

But up to last week, Bustamante Chairman Kenneth Benjamin told The Gleaner that the hospital was no longer in urgent need of ICU beds because of the construction of a cardiac unit in 2019 which included five ICUs. He said he made a request for funds to be redeployed to purchase equipment for proposed new wards.

Burrell did not close the door to a restaging of his charity concert but hinted that it may prove difficult to sway partners to revive the event.

“I can’t say that it won’t happen, but I can tell you that at this time, there are no plans for that,” he said.

“I have tons of people that are involved in Shaggy & Friends ... . I still have to convince these people to come on board with me, and in conversations with them, that’s a harder sell at this point.”

Like his wife Rebecca Packer, who runs the foundation, Burrell said that the Charities Act bound the foundation to disburse funds for a specified purpose.

Section 30(1) of the legislation states that “except with the written approval of the authority, a registered charitable organisation shall not alter its charitable purpose”. However, Subsection 2 says that “a registered charitable organisation that proposes to alter its charitable purpose shall give notice in writing to the authority”.

Burrell rubbished suggestions that the money could be turned over to the Government.

“That conversation should be thrown out,” he said. “We never give money to Government. We will never give money to Government. That is not the model of Shaggy & Friends, point blank!”

He noted that that was a precondition for some of his donors.

“The first thing out o’ dem mouth is: ‘Here, but mi nah give you money fi you go give Government,’” he said.

The entertainer shared that the SMADF has come to a resolution with hospital management to expand the ICU building to accommodate seven more beds. He said the expansion of the building, which will also include enough room for storage and offices, was agreed on after numerous meetings.

“The chairman came into knowledge of this, probably a little later. We had preliminary meetings from before and he wasn’t aware of that until afterwards,” Burrell said, adding that it was the hospital’s responsibility to update the chairman.

“And as far as the minister, I have not had a conversation with the minister at all,” Burrell said of Health Minister Dr Christopher Tufton, who expressed disappointment last week that the project was in limbo.

While not divulging a timeline for delivery, Burrell maintained that the intended plans will go “full steam ahead”.

“We’re taking this money and trying to stretch it the best, so we can’t just get up and quickly choose this person and choose that person,” he said. “We’ll have meetings after meetings to make sure we have the right contractors, the right architect, people who are passionate about it.”