The de­sign­er of the new TT$50 note, Stephen Pond, says the im­ages used, in­clud­ing the pic­ture of the fe­male mas­quer­ad­er in an award-win­ning cos­tume, rep­re­sent­ed the "essence" of the coun­try.

Pond, a se­nior de­sign­er with De La Rue, the world's largest com­mer­cial ban­knote print­er, said that in a No­vem­ber 14 in­ter­view with the Cen­tral Bank's Char­lene Ramd­hanie.Ramd­hanie said Pond was the per­son "who worked on our note and ul­ti­mate­ly se­lect­ed the Car­ni­val im­age that was used and when the "draft" was pre­sent­ed to us, we all just loved it."

In ex­plain­ing the process for se­lec­tion of the im­age, Pond said it must meet the se­cu­ri­ty re­quire­ment for the note and al­so must be a true rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the coun­try."It is about pick­ing the right im­ages for the process and al­so the one (im­age) you feel most cap­tures the essence of the coun­try."Ramd­hanie said the bank "was part of the de­sign process in oth­er ways, but Stephen se­lect­ed the im­age."And the bank yes­ter­day ex­pressed its dis­ap­point­ment over the pub­lic dis­con­tent on so­cial net­works over its re­designed $50 note. In a state­ment, the bank said while it re­spects free­dom of speech, "it is deeply dis­ap­point­ed by the few, who are twist­ing the use of this beau­ti­ful Car­ni­val im­age, that re­flects an el­e­ment of our cul­tur­al beau­ty as a coun­try."

Some cit­i­zens have used so­cial net­works to de­scribe the pic­ture of the fe­male mas­quer­ad­er in an award-win­ning cos­tume as de­pict­ing a Hin­du im­age, a ser­pent queen and even the dev­il.

The bank said how­ev­er: "All feed­back from our pub­lic out­reach ses­sions and on­line sur­vey have been 99 per cent pos­i­tive.But a video ex­press­ing con­cern about the note was post­ed on Face­book and has gone vi­ral with many peo­ple go­ing on so­cial me­dia con­demn­ing those who have spo­ken out against the re­designed note.

Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Min­is­ter Dr Lin­coln Dou­glas and Min­is­ter in the Fi­nance and the Econ­o­my Min­istry Rudranath In­dars­ingh de­fend­ed the re­designed note at the week­end say­ing crit­ics were just en­gag­ing in acts of di­vi­sive­ness.De La Rue has been used to de­sign and pro­duce T&T cur­ren­cy over the past 50 years. The firm is based in Eng­land.