Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans' Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO) has re­vealed that their tab­u­la­tor, Saman­tha Richards has been re­lieved of du­ty.

This fol­lows com­ments made by the tab­u­la­tor re­gard­ing the Road March race in San Fer­nan­do.

Richards was speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia out­side the South­ern Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (SAPA) yes­ter­day when she stat­ed that Machel Mon­tano was lead­ing the Road March com­pe­ti­tion with his Pardy, fol­lowed by Bun­ji Gar­lin’s Car­ry It.

In a re­lease, TU­CO sought to as­sure the pub­lic that re­sults of the Road March com­pe­ti­tion are based "pure­ly on sta­tis­tics, be­ing the num­ber of times a song is played when bands cross the stage at the var­i­ous judg­ing points." Fur­ther stat­ing that "the opin­ion ex­pressed by that par­tic­u­lar tab­u­la­tor is ir­rel­e­vant to the re­sults of the com­pe­ti­tion which are yet to be tab­u­lat­ed."

The en­ti­ty al­so em­pha­sised that the "in­tegri­ty of the Road March com­pe­ti­tion is sacro­sanct to TU­CO."

They al­so re­it­er­at­ed that the com­ments made by the tab­u­la­tor in ques­tion are not in­dica­tive of the re­sults of the Road March com­pe­ti­tion and were "unau­tho­rised and not in ac­cor­dance with the TU­CO’s cri­te­ria and stan­dards."

So­ca artiste Fay Ann Lyons-Al­varez, wife of Bun­ji Gar­lin, took to so­cial me­dia yes­ter­day ques­tion­ing the tab­u­la­tors’ pro­fes­sion­al­ism: “Are these JUDGES?? … If soooo Ok … what lev­el of mad­ness is this?? I’ve been around this com­pe­ti­tion for yearsssssss … nev­er have I heard or seen judges dis­cussing re­sults pre­ma­ture­ly! And to fur­ther state you’re get­ting in­fo from oth­er places and putting it in the pub­lic do­main be­fore a prop­er au­dit or tal­ly is done is the lev­el of “off” that makes you won­der if we re­al­ly in a sim­u­la­tion. You telling me Alyuh on Elon musk in­ter­net like we can’t see Alyuh giv­ing opin­ions and in­sights to re­sults …. And you ex­pect US to trust the process!!! Look Alyuh make sense nah!!! Ash­ton Kutch­er yuh could jump out now … This have to be a prank!”