PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

The re­cent chaos which saw sev­er­al mas camps scram­bling to sup­ply their mas­quer­aders with cos­tumes may be­come the cat­a­lyst for a lo­cal con­tent pol­i­cy for Car­ni­val cos­tume pro­duc­tion.

Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon was un­able to hide her frus­tra­tion while ad­dress­ing a sewing class at Jim­my Aboud yes­ter­day, as she not­ed that in many cas­es the miss­ing pieces from the cos­tumes could have been made in T&T.

“There was a big is­sue in Car­ni­val. Chi­na who a large band de­pend­ed on to sup­ply them with very ba­sic stuff which you could have made here in T&T, they were not able to sup­ply them,” Gopee-Scoon said.

Last week nu­mer­ous mas­quer­aders com­plained both in per­son and on so­cial me­dia about is­sues sur­round­ing their cos­tumes and over­all ex­pe­ri­ence with col­lec­tion dur­ing Car­ni­val, with one woman even tak­ing to so­cial me­dia stat­ing she had not re­ceived a bra from her band.

The is­sues prompt­ed Tribe Car­ni­val to is­sue an apol­o­gy to the mas­quer­aders who ac­knowl­edged their ef­forts had been un­der­mined by sup­ply chain is­sues.

Min­is­ter Gopee-Scoon said this should not have been an is­sue ex­pe­ri­enced giv­en the ca­pa­bil­i­ty of the lo­cal fash­ion in­dus­try.

“Any­one who had been in­volved in Car­ni­val would un­der­stand that there was an is­sue with cos­tumes they could not get from Chi­na in time. They may have been pants or shirts, I’m not sure ex­act­ly what as­pect of the cos­tume but the point about it brings it home to the fact that we ought to be do­ing these things our­selves. Try­ing to get it for $5 cheap­er or $10 cheap­er when in fact it can be done in T&T, we re­al­ly se­ri­ous­ly need to look at a lo­cal con­tent pol­i­cy,” Gopee-Scoon said.

She said, how­ev­er, that while this was her in­ten­tion, it would need to be dis­cussed with Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell but said giv­en that Car­ni­val is a size­able in­dus­try in it­self, she be­lieved her Min­istry would have a stake as well.

“I’m go­ing to speak to the Min­is­ter with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for Tourism on the ques­tion of hav­ing a lo­cal con­tent pol­i­cy and get­ting more peo­ple in­volved and en­sur­ing we can re­al­ly ex­port what we pro­duce in T&T in terms of Car­ni­val. Car­ni­val is more than mer­ri­ment it is a busi­ness. It is the man­u­fac­tur­ing of cos­tumes and we want to be able to do more of that here. All of the in­cen­tives that ap­ply to the man­u­fac­tur­ing in­dus­try ap­ply to the man­u­fac­tur­ing of Car­ni­val cos­tumes as well,” she said.

Gopee-Scoon point­ed out the fact that Aboud’s sewing class, which had seen over 500 suc­cess­ful par­tic­i­pants pre­vi­ous­ly, as well as the base of­fered by the lo­cal fash­ion pro­duc­tion fa­cil­i­ty, meant there was ca­pac­i­ty to pro­vide for Car­ni­val bands.