Kali­fa Clyne

Pan Trin­ba­go pres­i­dent Kei­th Di­az has slammed the Tourism Min­istry on an ad­ver­tise­ment for na­tion­al tourism month in T&T be­cause of the lack of a de­pic­tion of the na­tion­al in­stru­ment, the steel­pan. The ad ap­peared in a dai­ly news­pa­per last week. At a press con­fer­ence at Pan Trin­ba­go's Park Street of­fice on Fri­day, Di­az said oth­er Caribbean is­lands used the pan sym­bol to pro­mote their fes­ti­vals and cul­ture yet T&T was ne­glect­ing pan when pro­mot­ing tourism. "How can oth­er coun­tries use the in­stru­ment that was found­ed in T&T and we don't?" asked Di­az. He added that the ad­ver­tise­ment would go on­line for the world to see with­out steel­pan be­ing rep­re­sent­ed. Di­az al­so called on the Gov­ern­ment to ful­fil its promise of funds for the build­ing of Pan Trin­ba­go's head­quar­ters.

He said it had been over a year since Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar had made the promise to fi­nan­cial­ly as­sist with the con­struc­tion of the or­gan­i­sa­tion's head­quar­ters in Trinci­ty. "We have found a con­trac­tor but we need to still wait for mon­ey to be re­leased to us so that we could start the project," he said. Di­az re­vealed that he had a meet­ing sched­uled with of­fi­cials from the Pub­lic Trans­porta­tion Ser­vices Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC) to dis­cuss the more than $100,000 in dam­age to the Ari­ma Gold­en Sym­pho­ny Pa­n­yard. He said he ob­ject­ed strong­ly to the treat­ment of T&T's na­tion­al in­stru­ment. He de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion a dis­re­spect. Both Min­is­ter of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Win­ston Pe­ters and Tourism Min­is­ter Ru­pert Grif­fith could be reached for com­ment yes­ter­day and mes­sages left were not re­turned.