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Saturday, February 22, 2025

Culture bodies have to 'make do' for 2017

by

20161014

"Car­ni­val 2017 will be a suc­cess" is the as­sur­ance giv­en this week by Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, the Arts and Cul­ture Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly in the wake of the 2016-2017 Bud­get pre­sent­ed last week Fri­day by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, re­fer­ring to ex­pect­ed re­duc­tions to the trans­fer of sub­si­dies to statu­to­ry bod­ies, specif­i­cal­ly as this per­tains to cul­ture.

With Car­ni­val 2017 a mere five months away, the Cul­ture Min­is­ter sound­ed up­beat when she added:?"There are a cou­ple of new ini­tia­tives we are cur­rent­ly dis­cussing. We have been through re­ci­sions be­fore and car­ni­val has sur­vived. There is no cause for con­cern, like every­thing else, we now have to count our costs and en­sure that the mon­ey we spend is im­pact­ful."

With ref­er­ence to next year's Car­ni­val, the min­is­ter con­tin­ued:?"The al­lo­ca­tion to the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) has been re­duced as the NCC no longer has a loan, which was a sub­stan­tial amount to the al­lo­ca­tion made in the 2015-2016 bud­get."

An area of con­cern with­in the steel­band fra­ter­ni­ty for the past few months has been the non-pay­ment of mon­ey by Pan Trin­ba­go to pan mu­si­cians for per­form­ing at the 2016 Na­tion­al Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion. The min­is­ter ex­plained: "Pan Trin­ba­go re­ceives a sum of mon­ey from the NCC to man­age Panora­ma. With re­gards to their in­ter­nal af­fairs and fi­nances, how they pay out mon­ey is strict­ly to the re­mit of Pan Trin­ba­go.

"Pan Trin­ba­go has to or­gan­ise its fi­nances based on the 2016-2017 sub­ven­tion from the NCC and that has not been de­cid­ed as yet. We in­tend do­ing that pret­ty ear­ly to en­sure that they can then con­sid­er how they will ser­vice their out­stand­ing debts and the arrange­ments they will make for Car­ni­val 2017. I have been in con­stant com­mu­ni­ca­tion with Pan Trin­ba­go sen­si­tis­ing them to the fact that their al­lo­ca­tion will most like­ly be re­duced in keep­ing with the gen­er­al re­duc­tion of ex­pen­di­ture that the gov­ern­ment has em­barked up­on."

David Lopez, chair­man of the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Bands As­so­ci­a­tion (NC­BA), is con­cerned that no sig­nif­i­cant men­tion was made in the bud­get re­gard­ing cul­ture and its myr­i­ad com­po­nents. Stat­ing that the Fi­nance Min­is­ter did make men­tion of gov­ern­ment stat­ing its com­mit­ment to up­grad­ing and re­fur­bish­ing cul­tur­al in­sti­tu­tions, and ex­pand­ing mu­sic and cul­tur­al camps across all com­mu­ni­ties, the chair­man said: "With re­spect to car­ni­val and what is ex­pect­ed I have al­ways said the mon­ey that is di­vest­ed to the NCC for car­ni­val does not re­dound to the ben­e­fit of the pro­duc­ers of the car­ni­val. The peo­ple who ben­e­fit are the ser­vice providers; the peo­ple who pro­vide the stages, tents, san­i­ta­tion ameni­ties, light­ing and sound, and all the hos­pi­tal­i­ties per­tain­ing to food and drink.

"In terms of the mon­ey that is al­lo­cat­ed, the gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to say we have to tight­en our belts and come up with cre­ative ways of gen­er­at­ing rev­enue. If we look at the mon­ey that goes in­to car­ni­val in re­cent bud­gets, of $344M that goes to the NCC to run the car­ni­val, out of that the three in­ter­est groups that have the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of pro­duc­ing car­ni­val just get about $75M in all. In terms of mon­ey al­lo­cat­ed to cul­ture from this re­cent bud­get, which has not been men­tioned, the min­is­ter in­di­cat­ed un­der the trans­fer of sub­si­dies to statu­to­ry bod­ies might in­di­cate ex­act­ly how much will be giv­en to the NCC.

"If we are to go with what the prime min­is­ter is say­ing, on one hand he is call­ing for pri­vate par­tic­i­pa­tion in or­gan­is­ing the coun­try go­ing for­ward and on the oth­er hand you have the NCC say­ing that the gov­ern­ment is not in­volved in run­ning the car­ni­val.

They have to de­cide what they should do in terms of re­align­ment of the so­cial pro­grammes as if they want to run the NCC un­der the am­bit of a so­cial pro­grammes I guess the NCC al­so should be re­aligned be­cause the NCC has not ful­filled its man­date of mak­ing the car­ni­val a vi­able fi­nan­cial ven­ture. In­stead, a lot of mon­ey has gone in­to the NCC to pay con­trac­tors who are aligned to po­lit­i­cal par­ties across the board."

Kei­th Di­az, pres­i­dent of Pan Trin­ba­go Inc, said on Tues­day: "I wish to state very clear­ly that the eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion in the coun­try is faced by all Trin­bag­o­ni­ans; all of us. In the pan move­ment we will try and work with what­ev­er al­lo­ca­tion is giv­en to us by gov­ern­ment for the 2017 Na­tion­al Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion.

"We would al­so like to state in oth­er ar­eas we will like to have con­tin­ued di­a­logue with gov­ern­ment in plans that Pan Trin­ba­go has to car­ry the move­ment for­ward. We are a part of this na­tion and we would like to be heard as I think that we al­so have valu­able sug­ges­tions that will re­dound ben­e­fi­cial to the en­tire na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. The pan fac­to­ry is one of the projects that we know can boost busi­ness in our beloved coun­try, cre­at­ing em­ploy­ment for many."

Di­az added:?"I hope to meet with the Cul­ture Min­is­ter soon to dis­cuss when Pan Trin­ba­go will get any out­stand­ing mon­eys so that we will be able to fa­cil­i­tate the pay­ment of out­stand­ing stipends to pan peo­ple."

On Wednes­day, Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion chair­man Ken­ny de Sil­va said:?"This year's bud­get is re­flec­tive of what we got from the last bud­get, with a dif­fer­ence of about $12M-$15M less. For 2016, we got a re­vised es­ti­mate of $230,619,000 and for 2017 we are get­ting $168,500,000. Though we are work­ing with less mon­ey, the SIGs will get ex­act­ly what they re­ceived for Car­ni­val 2016.

"In terms of goods and ser­vices, the NCC?re­ceived ap­prox $15M. Our chal­lenge is that we will have to ne­go­ti­ate with sup­pli­ers for goods and ser­vices for Car­ni­val 2017 and hope to get their un­der­stand­ing that this is what we have. I am con­fi­dent that they will as­sist us as most of them are long serv­ing sup­pli­ers for car­ni­val.

We will ini­ti­ate an at­trac­tive mar­ket­ing thrust to get the cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ty more on board in 2017 which will as­sist in any short­fall we re­ceive. I don't see it a ma­jor chal­lenge.

"I wish to em­pha­sise that the SIGs will re­ceive the same mon­ey they re­ceived for 2016 Car­ni­val."

Lar­ry De­nal­li, pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Parang As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T?(NPATT), hav­ing just re­leased the 2016 Na­tion­al Parang Fes­ti­val sched­ule, was blunt in his re­sponse about re­ceiv­ing any gov­ern­ment sub­ven­tion for his as­so­ci­a­tion. He said:?"We haven't re­ceived any sub­ven­tion or grants from the cul­ture min­istry. We have pledges from cor­po­rate spon­sors for the 2016 parang sea­son. We have ap­plied to gov­ern­ment for a grant and are ex­pect­ing a sub­ven­tion but don't know when we will get it. The last year we re­ceived a sub­ven­tion was in 2014 so now the gov­ern­ment has two out­stand­ing ones for NPATT."

Lu­ta­lo Masim­ba (Bro Re­sis­tance), head of Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO) said last Mon­day: "Tu­co is ac­cus­tomed to cuts. We re­ceived cuts in our sub­ven­tion for the past few years, so if we get cut for 2017 you can't get blood.

"What we are very con­cerned about though is the frame­wok with which we op­er­ate. We are con­cerned about the long over­due ac­qui­si­tion of 50 per cent of lo­cal con­tent on the na­tion­al air­waves; have been lob­by­ing for our broad­cast li­cense since 1999 and we have a se­ri­ous con­cern about the scarci­ty of per­for­mance spaces na­tion­wide. These things are more crit­i­cal than cuts in a bud­get and al­lo­ca­tions for car­ni­val.

"Over­all, Tu­co finds it ex­treme­ly sad that on one hand the gov­ern­ment is talk­ing di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion to boost the na­tion's GDP and the de­vel­op­ment of the cre­ative in­dus­tries and on the oth­er is cut­ting the fund­ing. This will sti­fle the eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty of the cre­ative arts, and car­ni­val in par­tic­u­lar."


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