ORGANISERS have hit back at claims that the Chinese New Year's Day celebrations in the Museum Gardens were a "fiasco".

Between 800 and 1,000 people attended the event on Sunday afternoon, which the organisers, the National Centre For Early Music (NCEM), described as "a colourful family celebration of the Chinese New Year".

Retired nursing tutor Walter Swanton, of Poppleton, said: "My wife and I went down just before 3pm. There was a huge crowd there, as many as 1,000. People were just waiting and waiting. No one made an announcement to say what was going on.

"As far as I could see, there was no public address system. Whoever organised it should have had the bottle to come out on stage and explain what was going on. People were getting quite irate.

"People don't know who the organisers are, so it reflects badly on the whole city."

But centre director Delma Tomlin said they had employed an experienced professional stage manager who liaised with the relevant authorities in advance of the celebrations.

She said: "There was no PA because we didn't believe it to be necessary as the Lion Dancers bring their own music with them. As it turned out, the dancers were held up in traffic and appeared on stage 15 minutes after their scheduled start time.

"There were notices around the site saying the Lion Dancers would start at 3.25pm - they went on at 3.40pm. The Lion Dancers performed for 40 minutes and were clearly much enjoyed by the crowd."

Another York resident who attended the event, who asked not to be named, said: "People were waiting in the Museum Gardens from before 3pm. It was around 3.45pm when it finally started. And it wasn't really worth the wait - people started leaving after 15 minutes.

"There was no one visibly in charge. There were two security guards by the stage, but they had no idea what was going on.

"Lost kids kept making their way towards the museum itself, where there was a BBC outside broadcast team. This BBC bloke was constantly shouting: 'Has anyone lost a child?'."

Ms Tomlin said: "Lost children policies and procedures were all in place. The procedure was that they would be kept by an identifiable steward by the stage and all staff working on site knew that.

"As it turned out, the 'missing children' got to the TV crew first.

"They were reunited with their parents before it was necessary to implement the procedures.

"The NCEM would always wish to ensure that its audiences enjoy all the events it, and its many partners, organise, and is of course deeply saddened that this event did not meet people's expectations."

Updated: 11:12 Tuesday, January 31, 2006