For­mer pres­i­dent of the T&T Car­ni­val Bands As­so­ci­a­tion (TTC­BA) Ger­ard Weekes says the Gov­ern­ment's pro­posed con­trolled Car­ni­val safe zones bub­ble will burst.

He de­clared that "A Taste of Car­ni­val 2022" ben­e­fits all the stake­hold­ers in the in­dus­try ex­cept the re­al dri­ving force be­hind Car­ni­val–the cre­atives.

Speak­ing to the Sun­day Guardian re­cent­ly, Weekes said the pow­ers that be are again at­tempt­ing to dis­re­spect the arts and cul­ture.

"Those of us who have been in­volved in it for many years and have a pas­sion for our cre­ative tal­ents are al­ways not recog­nised or re­ward­ed in the right man­ner.

"This is just an­oth­er at­tempt to ob­tain and gain sub­ven­tions by the NCC (Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion) to sat­is­fy their own chal­lenges and not re­al­ly take in­to ac­count the needs of the cre­atives, all of whom suf­fered for the last two years due to the pan­dem­ic.

"We are in the midst of a pan­dem­ic, dur­ing this time when so many peo­ple have been chal­lenged and deal­ing with deaths dai­ly, what do they ex­pect will hap­pen and who will ben­e­fit?" he asked.

Weekes said the NCC will now seek sub­ven­tions for their con­trac­tors to in­stall the stage, lights, sound, and all the lo­gis­tics for host­ing these events while the grass­roots cre­atives are de­prived of any re­al ben­e­fits.

Weekes was ap­palled by the fact that the Gov­ern­ment would even con­sid­er hav­ing any sem­blance of Car­ni­val in 2022.

The Gov­ern­ment has al­lo­cat­ed $20 mil­lion for Car­ni­val, a $10 mil­lion cut from the $30 mil­lion that was orig­i­nal­ly an­nounced.

On Thurs­day the Min­istry of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts an­nounced that sup­port for Trinidad and To­ba­go’s “Taste of Car­ni­val” had been ap­proved. The bud­get al­lo­cat­ed to the NCC is $15 mil­lion for the host­ing of its events along with the three spe­cial in­ter­est groups, Pan Trin­ba­go, TU­CO, and the TTC­BA.

A fur­ther $5 mil­lion will be pro­vid­ed in spon­sor­ship sup­port to small­er, sep­a­rate­ly pro­mot­ed safe zone type of events. This spon­sor­ship will as­sist in off­set­ting some ex­pen­di­ture re­lat­ed to the pay­ment of artistes and per­for­mance fees to the cre­atives in­volved through the min­istry’s ap­proved ap­pli­ca­tion process, the min­istry stat­ed.

The band­leader for Mas Pas­sion said when one con­sid­ered Car­ni­val and its his­to­ry, every­one un­der­stood that the fes­ti­val was about the strug­gle of the peo­ple, the grass­roots, who were the main cre­atives.

He ex­plained T&T was the mec­ca of Car­ni­val, it was the home to the great­est show on earth, where the en­tire coun­try comes alive in the fes­tive mode, for both adults and chil­dren re­gard­less of re­li­gion, eth­nic­i­ty, gen­der or pref­er­ence of par­ty. "The way we vote is not how we par­ty," he added.

Weekes said hy­brid ver­sions of Car­ni­val had been ex­port­ed glob­al­ly be­cause of its in­fec­tious spir­it and eco­nom­ic im­pact, but none can com­pare to that of the Mec­ca of Car­ni­val; T&T.

Weekes dis­closed over the past decade T&T had lost its essence of in­trigue in host­ing the six to eight-week-long fes­ti­val lead­ing to the fi­nal two days of cli­max in the pa­rade of bands, due to its high cost of pro­duc­tion along with poor plan­ning and hur­ried repet­i­tive ex­e­cu­tion of its ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to the busi­ness­man, the huge de­cline in au­di­ences at ca­lyp­so tents and Car­ni­val shows had been ev­i­dent. Many bands had con­tin­ued to suf­fer loss­es due to the lack of par­tic­i­pa­tion as a re­sult of the high cost of cos­tumes.

Weekes dis­closed that their de­pen­den­cy had been main­ly on the for­eign na­tion­als' in­ter­est in play­ing mas.

He stat­ed that fetes had be­come mar­gin­alised with changes in al­co­hol con­sump­tion laws and se­cu­ri­ty is­sues pro­mot­ing a re­turn to cheap­er back-yard events tak­ing prece­dence.

Weekes re­vealed that coun­tries like Ja­maica, Mi­a­mi, Toron­to and oth­ers were be­com­ing more af­ford­able Car­ni­val des­ti­na­tions for fete seek­ers with bet­ter eco­nom­ic re­turns for pro­mot­ers.

He not­ed that the ad­vent of COVID-19 had great­ly im­pact­ed the cre­ative in­dus­try fi­nan­cial­ly and he was cer­tain that many of the coun­try's tal­ents though ea­ger to re­turn to the Car­ni­val are­na will not pos­sess the fi­nan­cial where­with­al to pro­duce a ma­jor pre­sen­ta­tion at this late stage.

Weekes opined one would think that the NCC dur­ing the pe­ri­od of COVID-19 would have used the op­por­tu­ni­ty to plan and pre­pare for a grand re­turn; one with a bang where the coun­try would cre­ative­ly come alive and once again set the trend for the world main­tain­ing T&T as the moth­er of all Car­ni­vals.

He added de­ri­sive­ly that the pow­ers that be were in­stead em­brac­ing a hy­brid ver­sion for 2022, safe zone events for the vac­ci­nat­ed on­ly.

Weekes be­lieves that the present stake­hold­ers TTC­BA, TU­CO and Pantrin­ba­go all lack the lead­er­ship qual­i­ties to man­age and ad­min­is­trate their re­spec­tive mem­ber­ships.

Weekes said that dur­ing the past year nei­ther the NCC nor any of the stake­hold­ers had been able to cre­ate a plat­form, vir­tu­al or oth­er­wise, to present and sup­port the fra­ter­ni­ty to gen­er­ate rev­enue for/or to ed­u­cate their re­spec­tive as­so­ci­a­tions.