Richard?Lord

Pan­men staged a peace­ful protest out­side the head of­fice Pan Trin­ba­go yes­ter­day de­mand­ing the im­me­di­ate res­ig­na­tion of its pres­i­dent Kei­th Di­az and the en­tire ex­ec­u­tive.

The protest was mount­ed in the wake of the non-pay­ment of monies to pan­men for Panora­ma 2016.

Man­ag­er of Pow­er Stars steel­band Gre­go­ry Lind­say and pan­nist Dane Gul­ston said pan­men were fed up of be­ing dis­re­spect­ed and mis­rep­re­sent­ed by the cur­rent ex­ec­u­tive.

There was a po­lice pres­ence dur­ing yes­ter­day's lunchtime protest at Park Street, Port-of-Spain.

The po­lice at one time ad­vised the demon­stra­tors to main­tain si­lence dur­ing the protest.

Lind­say and Gul­ston at­tempt­ed to meet with Di­az, who was up­stairs the build­ing to present a let­ter call­ing for his im­me­di­ate res­ig­na­tion but this was not achieved. Lind­say said the let­ter was writ­ten by Gul­ston on be­half of the re­cent­ly formed Pan Play­ers Move­ment of T&T.

For the past sev­er­al week the dis­grun­tled pan play­ers have been claim­ing dis­re­spect from Di­az and the Pan Trin­ba­go ex­ec­u­tive. They in­sist­ed yes­ter­day that they have had enough and the Di­az ex­ec­u­tive must re­sign im­me­di­ate­ly and al­low an in­ter­im ex­ec­u­tive com­pris­ing the chair­men of Pan Trin­ba­go's re­gion­al com­mit­tees to gov­ern the body un­til a new ex­ec­u­tive was elect­ed.

Lind­say said the time was lim­it­ed and Di­az must go now to en­sure the 2017 Panora­ma takes place. He said there will be no Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion in T&T if the out­stand­ing is­sues af­fect­ing pan­men were not re­solved.

Lind­say called on Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to in­ter­vene.

"Dr Prime Min­is­ter where are you? Act now or not a (pan) note will play in this coun­try."

Lind­say said: "This army of pan peo­ple big­ger than the T&T De­fence Force, re­spect the pan."

The pan­men were in­sist­ing that a meet­ing be held with Di­az. Gul­ston told re­porters that he want­ed to tell Di­az to his face that it was time for him to re­sign in the in­ter­est of the pan move­ment.

"We need some bet­ter rep­re­sen­ta­tion," he in­sist­ed.

Yes­ter­day, Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion chair­man Ken­ny De Sil­va said there will be Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion for Car­ni­val 2017 and his body would in­ter­vene in the dis­pute.

Last Wednes­day, Di­az was forced to abort a two-and-a half hour meet­ing with pan­men as they in­sist­ed "no mon­ey, no Panora­ma."

The ex­tra-or­di­nary meet­ing, which Di­az lat­er de­scribed as un­suc­cess­ful, was in­tend­ed to dis­cuss the is­sue of the non-pay­ment of mon­ey owed to pan­men for per­for­mances dur­ing Car­ni­val 2016 and al­lo­ca­tions for 2017.