Cherisse Moe

The na­tion's pan tuners are sound­ing the alarm that their liveli­hood is in jeop­ardy. Hun­dreds of pan tuners con­tin­ue to be neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed by the con­tin­u­ing short­age of qual­i­ty drums need­ed to pro­duce in­stru­ments. The tuners com­plain that the sit­u­a­tion has reached cri­sis pro­por­tions with skilled tuners and mem­bers of the pan fra­ter­ni­ty say­ing there are now no drums to be had. An arrange­ment be­tween Pan Trin­ba­go and Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um (NP), Sea Lots, in which NP sup­plied the or­gin­sa­tion with drums from its as­sem­bly plant, hit a snag re­cent­ly due to the "break­down" of a crit­i­cal piece of equip­ment.

Pan tuner Bertrand "Butch" Kel­man said he was ap­peal­ing to the au­thor­i­ties to "hear the cries of the small man" and rec­ti­fy the sit­u­a­tion as he is now "out of work."

He said: "I have some work to do for Phase 11 and Des­per­a­does and I can­not even do that. Even the poor qual­i­ty and poi­so­nous pans are gone. We need help. This is how we live." Kel­man, 67, a pan tuner for the past 40 years, said he was re­cent­ly as­sured by Pan Trin­ba­go pres­i­dent Kei­th Di­az that the or­gan­i­sa­tion is work­ing to ad­dress the prob­lem in the short­est pos­si­ble time. "He said he will be giv­ing us some good news soon so that's what I'm wait­ing on. We are in Oc­to­ber and it's cre­at­ing prob­lems for Panora­ma." He added, "Right now, it's not very nice. Best I go on the road and play some pan and if peo­ple like it they will throw some mon­ey for me."

Every­body is cul­pa­ble

Pan Trin­ba­go Vice Pres­i­dent Bry­on Ser­rette not­ed that the or­gan­i­sa­tion met with NP of­fi­cials on Oc­to­ber 11 in a bid to ad­dress the is­sue. Ser­rette stat­ed that he was aware of the "frus­tra­tion of pan tuners" but "hope­ful" that the sit­u­a­tion would be re­solved soon. He said: "A lot of tuners have called and I un­der­stand what they are go­ing through. What I can tell you is that we are due to meet with Panadigm In­no­va­tions Lim­it­ed- mak­ers of the G Pans-and they in­di­cat­ed an abil­i­ty to pro­vide drums so we are go­ing to hear what they have to say." Adding that "every­body is cul­pa­ble" for the "un­for­tu­nate sit­u­a­tion," Ser­rette said the time had come for Pan Trin­ba­go to have more au­ton­o­my in the mak­ing of the drums.

"As it is now NP is mak­ing drums for NP and we are just a by-prod­uct. We have to en­sure that we have the ca­pa­bil­i­ty to make our own drums. If pan is to be a se­ri­ous in­dus­try in this coun­try, we must have more con­trol in the avail­abil­i­ty of drums. I want it to be a sit­u­a­tion where we can sup­ply NP or any­body else who needs drums and not the oth­er way around."

Pan fra­ter­ni­ty must stand on its own

Man­ag­er of Pam­beri Steel Or­ches­tra, Nestor Sul­li­van, who de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as a "sad re­flec­tion on T&T" said Pan Trin­ba­go should "stand on its own" and take more re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the woes fac­ing the in­dus­try. Sul­li­van, said the gov­ern­ment had "more im­por­tant things to study about" and called on stake­hold­ers to take mat­ters in­to their own hands. He added, "We could im­port from Ja­maica, Venezuela and North Amer­i­ca. It's child­ish to go cry­ing to the gov­ern­ment for that is­sue. They have big­ger is­sues to think about such as the Pan Head­quar­ters, Panora­ma and Car­ni­val. We are more than 50-years-old and can't be look­ing to our par­ents to buy some­thing for us to eat every time we are hun­gry."

NP: Re­solv­ing is­sue

Mean­while, Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Co-or­di­na­tor, NP, Ana-Lisa Arlen-Ben­jamin ad­mit­ted that there is a prob­lem with the sup­ply of drums but told the T&T Guardian that NP is "work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly to­wards re­solv­ing the sit­u­a­tion." She added, "These are our cus­tomers and we val­ue them. We don't want to have un­hap­py cus­tomers. We're not hap­py with the sit­u­a­tion right now and we want to re­solve it as soon as pos­si­ble." Nu­mer­ous calls to Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Min­is­ter Win­ston Pe­ters' cel­lu­lar phone went an­swered.