Cherisse Moe

Pan Trin­ba­go pres­i­dent Kei­th Di­az has re­it­er­at­ed his call for Gov­ern­ment to im­me­di­ate­ly ad­dress the short­age of qual­i­ty drums to make steel­pans. Di­az said the sit­u­a­tion had reached "cri­sis pro­por­tions" and well over 200 per­sons em­ployed in the in­dus­try were on the bread­line as they de­pend­ed on the drums to make a liv­ing. With Car­ni­val 2012 fast ap­proach­ing, Di­az said he ap­pealed to the au­thor­i­ties to move quick­ly to rec­ti­fy the prob­lem as the short­age would neg­a­tive­ly af­fect next year's Na­tion­al Panora­ma Com­pe­ti­tion.

He said: "So if there is no sup­ply of drums, what will the pan­men do? Pre­lim­i­nar­ies for Panora­ma will be­gin on Jan­u­ary 19 and there are no drums. Tuners and peo­ple who de­pend on the in­dus­try for em­ploy­ment are out of work." To fur­ther com­pound the prob­lem, Di­az said an arrange­ment be­tween Pan Trin­ba­go and Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um (NP), Sea Lots, to sup­ply drums from its drum as­sem­bly plant has "fall­en apart" due to the "break­down" of a crit­i­cal piece of equip­ment.

He said de­spite writ­ing NP about four months ago high­light­ing the hard­ships pan­men are fac­ing, the sit­u­a­tion has not been re­solved. He added: "The board at NP ap­pears not to ap­pre­ci­ate that drums are es­sen­tial to the man­u­fac­ture of steel­pans. We hear that the ma­chin­ery re­quires parts and they don't have the parts as yet. When I spoke to some­one at NP, he said the ma­chines are so old they can­not get parts for it. "Ap­par­ent­ly work­ers are wait­ing on the board to put for­ward a pro­pos­al to re­place the old ma­chines but they can­not say when this will hap­pen. I find that is mad­ness."

Di­az said drums avail­able lo­cal­ly were poi­so­nous and un­safe for use. He said he wel­comed any as­sis­tance from NP to al­le­vi­ate the woes fac­ing the in­dus­try. "If NP can im­port about 2,000 drums in the in­ter­im, we will re­al­ly ap­pre­ci­ate that, Most of the tuners in Trinidad do not use chem­i­cal drums be­cause they are af­fect­ing their health," he said. For­mer Pan Trin­ba­go pres­i­dent Patrick Arnold said he was "very con­cerned" about the di­rec­tion the steel­band in­dus­try was head­ed and want­ed Gov­ern­ment to "look in­to the mat­ter. "We are the land of the steel­pan but what are we re­al­ly do­ing? We should have a plant here so that we don't have to im­port drums. It's a big joke. We have to get se­ri­ous." he said. Arnold said de­spite writ­ing to the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties on the is­sue since 1998, he had seen no re­al changes.

NP re­sponds

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Rae Gilbert, cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions of­fi­cer/me­dia re­la­tions, of NP, said steps were be­ing tak­en to deal with the is­sue. "Yes, there is a prob­lem with the sup­ply of the drums at this time. How­ev­er, we are work­ing to re­solve the prob­lem as soon as pos­si­ble," she said. At­tempts to con­tact Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Min­is­ter Win­ston Pe­ters for com­ment were fu­tile.