Kali­fa Clyne

The four large mas bands which will be part of the So­cadrome ini­tia­tive at the Jean Pierre Com­plex may still head to the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain, on Car­ni­val Tues­day.When the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion okayed the ini­tia­tive last week, it ar­gued that the four bands – Bliss, Harts, Tribe and Yu­ma – would ac­count for tak­ing some 15,000 rev­ellers to the Jean Pierre Com­plex in­stead, thus free­ing up some of the peren­ni­al con­ges­tion caused by bands queu­ing up on Char­lotte Street to get to the Sa­van­nah stage.How­ev­er, the or­gan­is­ers of the So­cadrome said yes­ter­day that the bands have not to­tal­ly ruled out cross­ing the Sa­van­nah which is seen as the ul­ti­mate goal of mas­quer­aders. They not­ed, though, they would al­low the bands ac­tu­al­ly com­pet­ing in the Pa­rade of the Bands com­pe­ti­tions pri­or­i­ty in cross­ing the main judg­ing point.

In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Harts band­leader Luis Hart said his band would def­i­nite­ly be go­ing to the Sa­van­nah on Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day.Harts, which is usu­al­ly the first band to cross the stage on Car­ni­val Tues­day, will take its mas­quer­aders to the stage at around 7.30 am be­fore head­ing to the al­ter­na­tive route and to the So­cadrome, he said."I be­lieve the oth­er bands (Yu­ma, Tribe and Bliss) will be go­ing to the So­cadrome first and will then make their way to the Sa­van­nah stage," Hart said."This is about con­ve­nience for the mas­quer­ad­er. The bands want to give the com­pet­ing bands the op­por­tu­ni­ty to cross the stage and then lat­er in the day head to the Sa­van­nah."Or­gan­is­ers said yes­ter­day the three oth­er bands al­so in­tend­ed to cross the Sa­van­nah stage af­ter cross­ing the So­cadrome stage once con­ges­tion on the route to the Sa­van­nah has de­creased."The in­ten­tion is to give pri­or­i­ty to the com­pet­ing bands. The plan is to go to the So­cadrome, then go back on the pa­rade route, and if the pa­rade is flow­ing, then the bands will take their mas­quer­aders to the Sa­van­nah." said a Tribe of­fi­cial.

The de­ci­sion of the or­gan­is­ers may al­so be a re­sponse to neg­a­tive com­ments from mas­quer­aders in the wake of the an­nounce­ment of the So­cadrome ini­tia­tive.Many of them took to so­cial me­dia to ex­press their frus­tra­tion at the de­ci­sion and not be­ing able to cross the Sa­van­nah stage. Many said they were not told of any such plans when they were sign­ing up, or else they would have ex­er­cised their right to join oth­er bands.While the pub­lic will be charged a $25 fee to en­ter the venue, or­gan­is­ers are en­cour­ag­ing all me­dia to pro­vide cov­er­age for the event free of charge.They al­so said they were try­ing to ad­dress the con­cerns of Wood­brook res­i­dents.Last week, Wood­brook res­i­dents threat­ened protests and cir­cu­lat­ed a pe­ti­tion they had hoped would have stopped the NCC from okay­ing the plan since the bands plan to pass through their com­mu­ni­ty on the way to the Jean Pierre Com­plex.They raised con­cerns over noise pol­lu­tion and ac­cess to emer­gency ser­vices, as well as mas­quer­aders leav­ing garbage in the streets and uri­nat­ing on walls.It is not the first time mas bands have used streets in Wood­brook as a pa­rade route, as both the de­funct mas bands Poi­son and Bar­barossa were known to pass though Wood­brook on Car­ni­val Tues­day."We have in­creased the num­ber of road mar­shals on the road, as one of the con­cerns ex­pressed by res­i­dents was ac­cess to emer­gency ser­vices," a So­cadrome of­fi­cial told the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day.

"It usu­al­ly isn't a prob­lem, as mas­quer­aders are trained to pay at­ten­tion when the mu­sic stops and to let ve­hi­cles pass though but we are still mak­ing at­tempts to ad­dress the con­cerns. "We want this to work and we un­der­stand that the con­cerns of the res­i­dents need to be ad­dressed," he added.The or­gan­is­ers, as stip­u­lat­ed in the con­tract with the man­age­ment of the Jean Pierre Com­plex, are re­quired to clean up all the sur­round­ing streets near the venue with­in four hours of the end of the event."We don't want to ter­ri­bly in­con­ve­nience res­i­dents. We want this to work and we are look­ing at all the com­ments and try­ing to ad­dress them," it was stat­ed.So far, or­gan­is­ers have re­ceived in­for­mal re­quests from oth­er bands who are in­ter­est­ed in us­ing the 15,000-square-foot So­cadrome stage as well but they said all for­mal re­quests need to go through the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T.Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams yes­ter­day said he was sat­is­fied that the po­lice would have enough man­pow­er to mon­i­tor Car­ni­val across the coun­try, de­spite the late ad­di­tion of the So­cadrome and al­ter­na­tive route for par­ty bands."We have called po­lice of­fi­cers off va­ca­tion leave to pro­vide ad­di­tion­al sup­port and we will be giv­en as­sis­tance by the T&T De­fence Force. I am sat­is­fied that we will ef­fec­tive­ly po­lice Car­ni­val 2014," Williams said.