Kevon Felmine

Point Fortin Bor­ough Day cel­e­bra­tions are con­sid­ered by many as the biggest fes­ti­val af­ter the Car­ni­val sea­son, but once again fes­tiv­i­ties have been launched with­out the Gov­ern­ment's fund­ing.Hun­dreds came out at the re­fur­bished Vic­tor Chin Kit Park for Fri­day night's launch which turned in­to a street par­ty fea­tur­ing So­ca Monarch and Road March cham­pi­on 2013 Austin "Su­perBlue" Lyons, H2O Ph­lo and Je­unes Agape.

A tal­ent­ed line-up of steel­bands which in­clud­ed Tor­na­does Steel Or­ches­tra, Trin­mar Marines, Fucs­dat pan­side and Fon­claire Steel Or­ches­tra cre­at­ed an en­tic­ing pre­view of things to come over the next three weeks of cel­e­bra­tions which cul­mi­nates on the ac­tu­al Bor­ough Day, May 4.De­spite the fes­tive open­ing to the sea­son, chair­man of the Point Fortin Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion's Sports and Fes­ti­vals Com­mit­tee Sher­win St Hillaire said fund­ing chal­lenges con­tin­ued to hin­der the ex­pan­sion of the cel­e­bra­tions.

St Hillaire, the coun­cil­lor for Techi­er/Gaupo, said based on the pal­try fund­ing in 2010 giv­en by for­mer min­is­ter of arts and mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Win­ston "Gyp­sy" Pe­ters of a mere $13,000, they de­cid­ed not to seek funds from the Gov­ern­ment.How­ev­er, he not­ed that the Gov­ern­ment should get in­volved as the dy­nam­ics of the Bor­ough Day cel­e­bra­tions can bol­ster T&T's tourism dri­ve.

"It will go a great deal fur­ther if the Gov­ern­ment of­fers fund­ing be­cause the op­por­tu­ni­ty is there to de­vel­op the na­tion­al cal­en­dar and to sell Bor­ough Day to the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket."Where the tourism dri­ve is con­cerned, for­eign­ers would know there is an­oth­er fes­ti­val af­ter Car­ni­val that they can come to."Bor­ough Day has a dif­fer­ent con­cept–the whole feel­ings, mood, vibes the rev­el­ling, so­cial is­sues sur­round­ing it makes it a to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent ex­pe­ri­ence," St Hillaire said.

He added that cor­po­rate spon­sor­ship was al­so an is­sue and that the cel­e­bra­tions were con­tin­u­ing for the past two years with fund­ing from At­lantic, Carib Brew­ery and the Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion it­self.He said bmo­bile had con­tributed last year and they were still op­ti­mistic that they would come on board. Petrotrin, which oc­cu­pies a mas­sive space in Point Fortin, last con­tributed to cel­e­bra­tions in 2010.

In of­fi­cial­ly launch­ing the cel­e­bra­tions, Point Fortin may­or Clyde Paul said while the cor­po­ra­tion was seek­ing to take the fes­ti­val to an­oth­er lev­el, the burgess­es need­ed to keep the cel­e­bra­tions clean and crime free.