Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

Car­ni­val 2025 is ex­pect­ed to cost tax­pay­ers more than $140 mil­lion, Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) chair­man Win­ston Pe­ters has con­firmed. How­ev­er, in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Pe­ters said de­spite the sub­stan­tial bud­get, the NCC will not be in­creas­ing prize amounts for Car­ni­val com­pe­ti­tions.

“It’s nev­er suf­fi­cient, but at the end of the day, you have to work with what you have. We can’t live in the past. Things are not what they used to be. Our coun­try is un­der stress, like most of the world, and we have to work with what we have,” Pe­ters stat­ed.

Ac­knowl­edg­ing con­cerns over re­duced fund­ing, he not­ed, “Peo­ple would say they used to get $2 mil­lion, but that’s ‘used to’ be­cause we don’t have it now. If our for­tunes change, we might very well get it again. But for now, we have to con­tin­ue to work with what we have.”

How­ev­er, the as­sis­tance pro­vid­ed to un­spon­sored steel­bands has been in­creased this year. Dur­ing a cer­e­mo­ny at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah yes­ter­day, Pan Trin­ba­go dis­trib­uted cheques to over 149 un­spon­sored bands from all over T&T.

Pan Trin­ba­go pres­i­dent Bev­er­ly Ram­sey-Moore at­trib­uted the in­crease to suc­cess­ful ne­go­ti­a­tions with the Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture, and the Arts.

“We were able to ne­go­ti­ate and con­vince our min­istry, our line min­is­ter, to give you a lit­tle more. I will leave that for the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary to dis­close how much the ‘lit­tle more’ will be, which will go to you and to our play­ers. Play­ers will al­so be giv­en a lit­tle more,” she said.

The Pan Trin­ba­go pres­i­dent al­so high­light­ed on­go­ing ef­forts to se­cure fund­ing from the pri­vate sec­tor. 

Ram­sey-Moore said, “We fixed our­selves. We took note of our chal­lenges, and as a peo­ple, as com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers, we worked on re­brand­ing and clean­ing up the or­gan­i­sa­tion. When we did that, the world took no­tice. The Gov­ern­ment took no­tice. Cor­po­rate Trinidad and To­ba­go took no­tice.”

She fur­ther added, “We are meet­ing with sev­er­al groups in the cor­po­rate sec­tor who are will­ing to spon­sor. Our mar­ket­ing de­part­ment has now ad­vanced from sim­ply ask­ing for do­na­tions to at­tract­ing steel­band am­bas­sadors.

“These com­pa­nies are now will­ing to come on board, not just for Car­ni­val, but to as­sist us through­out the year with all our ac­tiv­i­ties. They are join­ing as steel band am­bas­sadors, con­tribut­ing amounts start­ing from $750,000 and up.”

Ram­sey-Moore al­so com­mend­ed the Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion for pass­ing the Na­tion­al Em­blems of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Amend­ment) Bill, 2025, which places the na­tion­al in­stru­ment on the Coat of Arms.

Speak­ing at the cheque dis­tri­b­u­tion, the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Tourism, Cul­ture, and the Arts, Mar­tel Wal­dron, an­nounced that the amount al­lo­cat­ed for sin­gle pan bands has been in­creased to $10,000, while con­ven­tion­al bands will re­ceive $20,000. He ex­pressed hope that these amounts will sig­nif­i­cant­ly as­sist bands in their prepa­ra­tions for the com­pe­ti­tions.