Tremaine So­ca Warn­er

Use pan to help curb crime.This was the call made by Pan Trin­ba­go pres­i­dent Kei­th Di­az on Thurs­day at the prize­giv­ing cer­e­mo­ny for the NL­CB J'Ou­vert Morn­ing Bomb Com­pe­ti­tion and the North­ern Re­gion Groovy So­ca Steel­band Com­pe­ti­tion.The event was held at the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion's (NCC) VIP lounge at Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain.

In his re­marks, Di­az com­mend­ed mem­bers of Pan Trin­ba­go's North­ern Re­gion for ad­vanc­ing the pan move­ment. He said in light of the wors­en­ing crime sit­u­a­tion, the na­tion­al in­stru­ment should be used as a sym­bol of peace and uni­ty for mis­guid­ed young peo­ple, specif­i­cal­ly those in Laven­tille.

"The ex­ec­u­tive of Pan Trin­ba­go feels that too much vi­o­lence is go­ing down in Laven­tille and in oth­er ar­eas through­out the coun­try. The im­age of our coun­try is very very im­por­tant to the steel pan move­ment," he said. Di­az urged young peo­ple to put down their weapons and en­cour­aged those in au­thor­i­ty to "bind to­geth­er" to end vi­o­lent crime.

On April 21, he said, mem­bers of the pan fra­ter­ni­ty and any oth­er will­ing cit­i­zens will hold a march for peace be­gin­ning in East PoS."Too many young peo­ple are be­ing killed. They must get the mes­sage. So we de­cid­ed to have the walk from Mor­vant Junc­tion to Port-of-Spain. The steel­band move­ment is com­ing out now to tell the gen­er­al pub­lic that we want the vi­o­lence to stop," he said.Di­az said the route of the march was still be­ing fi­nalised.

Al­so present at Thurs­day's func­tion was chair­man of the Pan Trin­ba­go's North­ern Di­vi­sion Ger­ard Mendez who said steel pan com­pe­ti­tions and events were be­com­ing more and more dif­fi­cult to host ow­ing to the scarci­ty of fund­ing.De­spite this, he said, such events con­tin­ued to take place suc­cess­ful­ly thanks to the per­se­ver­ance and will­ing­ness of Pan Trin­ba­go and oth­er gen­er­ous bod­ies.

Mendez al­so out­lined some of the di­vi­sion's plan for the rest of the year, in­clud­ing fundrais­ing events and a se­ries of con­certs card­ed to be­gin in April. The con­cert se­ries, he said, will in­clude the steel­bands that placed in the top three at this year's Panora­ma. Af­ter the speech­es, pre­sen­ta­tions were made to the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of var­i­ous steel­bands that took part in the two com­pe­ti­tions.