JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Sunday, March 16, 2025

Carnival bandleaders to PM: It’s too expensive to make mas with local materials

by

Carisa Lee
16 days ago
20250227

Sev­er­al band­lead­ers are chal­leng­ing Prime Min­is­ter Dr Row­ley’s com­ments about for­eign ex­change be­ing wast­ed on the im­por­ta­tion of Car­ni­val cos­tumes, say­ing the truth of the in­dus­try is that it is just too ex­pen­sive to make mas with lo­cal­ly sourced raw ma­te­ri­als.

Speak­ing on Tues­day at the sod-turn­ing cer­e­mo­ny for Nu­trim­ix’s An­i­mal Feed and Pet Food plant in Point Lisas, Row­ley em­pha­sised that cos­tumes should be lo­cal­ly sourced, not­ing the im­por­ta­tion of cos­tumes was drain­ing the coun­try of much-need­ed forex.

How­ev­er, Ex­ou­sia Mas leader Col­in Prov­i­dence says while he agrees with Dr Row­ley’s sug­ges­tion about sup­port­ing lo­cal, he felt the Prime Min­is­ter did not have the rel­e­vant knowl­edge of what’s hap­pen­ing in the in­dus­try.

“Lo­cal­ly, we can­not com­pete with the prices for fin­ished goods com­ing out of Chi­na, the large bands cap­i­talise on this. At the end of the day, it’s about eco­nom­ics. You pur­chase where you get a bet­ter price,” Prov­i­dence said.

He ex­plained that band­lead­ers spent about 50 to 100 per cent more to pro­duce cos­tumes lo­cal­ly.

Not­ing that cos­tumes in his band, Ocea­nia, range from $3,500-$8,000 this year, he said, “Small­er bands, how­ev­er, are usu­al­ly left with no choice as they are un­able to take ad­van­tage of economies of scale.”

Ac­cord­ing to Prov­i­dence, the Chi­nese al­so make it easy and eas­i­er to ac­cess their ser­vices, as they are now do­ing ful­ly com­plet­ed cos­tumes, in­clud­ing feath­er work, which was pre­vi­ous­ly on­ly done lo­cal­ly.

“If this con­tin­ues, in a very short time all lo­cal in­put in­to the craft of cos­tume mak­ing will be im­port­ed,” he said.

Prov­i­dence said more in­cen­tives must be giv­en to bands who pro­duce lo­cal­ly to off­set the costs.

“Last­ly, the PM should al­so be aware that many car­ni­val bands bring in much-need­ed for­eign cur­ren­cy, as mas­quer­aders from abroad set­tle their bal­ances in US dol­lars,” he said.

The own­er of medi­um band Mar­di Gras TT, which cre­ates its cos­tumes sole­ly from lo­cal ma­te­r­i­al, con­firmed it would be cheap­er if they pur­chase the ma­te­r­i­al in­ter­na­tion­al­ly but not­ed their last-minute cus­tomers do not al­low for that.

“It would be cheap­er by far,” Miguel Bap­tiste said.

He said their 1,000-1,500 pa­trons con­firm just weeks be­fore Car­ni­val, so it’s dif­fi­cult to pur­chase in bulk. Bap­tiste said they get their ma­te­ri­als for the cos­tumes from Sama­roo’s Car­ni­val Store and Jim­my Aboud.

An­oth­er mas band that ac­quires ma­te­r­i­al lo­cal­ly is Ki­net­ic Mas. Leader Ann Marie Placide said there is a lot of ac­cess to ma­te­r­i­al in T&T and many for­eign­ers buy their ma­te­ri­als at Jim­my Aboud, Yufe’s and oth­er stores to take back home.

Placide, whose prices range from $1,300 and $5,000, said their cos­tumes are not made from biki­nis, feath­ers, or beads but more clothes.

“Yes, you can get re­al­ly cheap things in Chi­na but our be­lief is that when you put them for two days on the road ... that same Chi­nese thing will not last two days on the road,” she said.

“We like to see our things come alive,” she added.

How­ev­er, she ad­mit­ted that one year they had to im­port their silks but on­ly be­cause they could not be pur­chased here.

“Nor­mal­ly, once we can get what­ev­er we need here we buy it here,” she said.

Al­so con­tact­ed on the is­sue, YU­MA Vibe and Ron­nie and Caro Mas Band de­clined to com­ment on the PM’s state­ment.

But band­leader Ron­nie McIn­tosh said mas bands al­so pro­vide job op­por­tu­ni­ties in the fac­to­ries and on the road. McIn­tosh added that the ma­jor­i­ty of lo­cal ser­vices (trans­porta­tion, ac­com­mo­da­tion) are al­so ful­ly booked dur­ing this pe­ri­od.

“Sales in wa­ter, sales in al­co­hol, sales in juice, sales, sales, sales, car­ni­val time,” he stat­ed.

Guardian Me­dia al­so reached out to SPIR­IT Mas, K2K Al­liance, Show­time and Tribe for a com­ment but none of them had re­spond­ed up to press time.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored