Ane­ka Lee

Pan Trin­ba­go still owes $2.1 mil­lion in prize mon­ey and tro­phies to steel or­ches­tras and par­tic­i­pants of the Pan is Beau­ti­ful XII na­tion­al steel­band fes­ti­val, held in No­vem­ber 2013.Now five months since the com­pe­ti­tion, the par­tic­i­pat­ing steel bands in­tend to meet on Thurs­day 24 April 2014 to de­cide on what ac­tion they should take against fes­ti­val or­gan­is­ers.The meet­ing will be host­ed at the pan yard of third-place win­ners in the Sin­gle Pan Bands cat­e­go­ry, 'D' Orig­i­nal Wood­brook Mod­er­naires, who are owed TT$70,000.

Pan Trin­ba­go's oth­er cred­i­tors from the com­pe­ti­tion in­clude first place win­ners in the Or­ches­tras' cat­e­go­ry, Co­dring­ton Pan Fam­i­ly; Gold­en Hands, win­ners of the En­sem­bles cat­e­go­ry and so­lo pan­nist Joshua Jabari Be­deau, who won the Soloists fi­nals.Emond Berke­ley, an ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber of the 'D' Orig­i­nal Wood­brook Mod­er­naires, ex­plained that it was on­ly af­ter the fes­ti­val had end­ed, that "Pan Trin­ba­go peo­ple told us that they did not get the mon­ey from the min­istry."

"They are telling us that the Min­is­ter re­neged on his promise to give them the mon­ey," he con­tin­ued, "but our point is that the fund­ing should have been se­cured be­fore they had any com­pe­ti­tion." Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Min­is­ter of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, Dr Lin­coln Dou­glas would not re­spond to a ques­tion of whether his min­istry had, in fact, com­mit­ted mon­ey to Pan is Beau­ti­ful XII.He said he would need to speak to Pan Trin­ba­go to find out what they are say­ing about the min­istry, af­ter which he may need to is­sue a press re­lease.

"I don't want to speak," he said, "un­til I have spo­ken to Pan Trin­ba­go and to my staff."But Berke­ley said that a month be­fore Car­ni­val, par­tic­i­pants were told by Pan Trin­ba­go of­fi­cials that meet­ings had been arranged with the min­is­ter who was in the process of go­ing to Cab­i­net for ap­proval for the funds.

"It doesn't seem that any mon­ey is forth­com­ing," said Berke­ley, adding that Pan Trin­ba­go "should have been able to pay the mon­ey from the prof­it from The Greens," their 2014 Car­ni­val ini­tia­tive de­signed to at­tract a younger au­di­ence by host­ing a pool par­ty and DJ mu­sic along­side the steel pan fi­nals. "They are on­ly de­pend­ing on the gov­ern­ment and that can­not be the way for­ward," he said.

Re­flect­ing on the fact that the theme of last year's Pan is Beau­ti­ful XII was Re­spect the Steel­pan–Play it with Pride, Berke­ley said that Pan Trin­ba­go's fail­ure to pay prize mon­ey has been "to­tal­ly dis­re­spect­ful to us." "We had to buy uni­forms, pro­vide food for band mem­bers every night dur­ing prac­tice... now we just want our mon­ey."

Orig­i­nal­ly sched­uled for Oc­to­ber 2011, Pan is Beau­ti­ful XII was post­poned, among oth­er rea­sons, be­cause of "lim­it­ed fund­ing" and re­cent­ly at a prize-giv­ing cer­e­mo­ny held in Port-of-Spain, Ger­ard Mendez, Chair­man of the Pan Trin­ba­go North­ern re­gion, un­der which the Mod­er­naires fall, spoke of the chal­lenges of dwin­dling cor­po­rate spon­sor­ship.He said that one cor­po­rate spon­sor had cut its com­mit­ment from $100,000 to just $10,000.

Asked for com­ment on the non-pay­ment of par­tic­i­pat­ing bands in last year's Pan is Beau­ti­ful XII fes­ti­val, Mendez said that as the chair­man of the north­ern re­gion he was not re­spon­si­ble for the pay­ment of prize mon­ey for the com­pe­ti­tion. He said he sym­pa­thized with bands who have not been paid.

He sug­gest­ed that ques­tions be di­rect­ed at the Pan Trin­ba­go ex­ec­u­tive, but nei­ther Pan Trin­ba­go Pres­i­dent Kei­th Di­az nor Vice Pres­i­dent By­ron Ser­rette, could be reached for com­ment. Calls to Pan Trin­ba­go Sec­re­tary Richard Forteau al­so went unan­swered.