Kali­fa Clyne

The Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny (NP) has do­nat­ed its drum-mak­ing fac­to­ry to Pan Trin­ba­go to be used for the man­u­fac­tur­ing of the steel­pan.

Pres­i­dent of Pan Trin­ba­go Kei­th Di­az said so yes­ter­day dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain.

"Just yes­ter­day (Wednes­day) NP do­nat­ed it's drum-mak­ing fa­cil­i­ty to us," Di­az added.

The steel­band fra­ter­ni­ty had faced a drum short­age in 2011 when the ma­chine be­ing used at NP's fa­cil­i­ty stopped op­er­at­ing due to me­chan­i­cal prob­lems.

Di­az de­scribed the do­na­tion as a tremen­dous show of sup­port to the na­tion­al in­stru­ment.

An­oth­er show of sup­port came from Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Min­is­ter Lin­coln Dou­glas who said he would fo­cus on "le­git­imis­ing" all the pa­n­yards in T&T.

Dou­glas said most of the pa­n­yards were sit­u­at­ed on state lands with some us­ing "un­known" prop­er­ties.

He added: "They do not have the au­thor­i­ty to use the re­al es­tate they are on. We are look­ing to in­vest those prop­er­ties in­to the hands of the pan­men."

Di­az said he ex­pect­ed Dou­glas to look at se­cu­ri­ty in the pa­n­yards as well as deeds to lands for bands.