Gail Alexan­der

It is now too late for a T&T del­e­gate to be sent to the Miss Uni­verse pageant in Au­gust and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Cul­ture and Gen­der Af­fairs Min­is­ter Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald is urg­ing the busi­ness sec­tor to get in­volved in fu­ture fran­chise op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Mc­Don­ald, in a state­ment to Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, said, "We see a tremen­dous busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ty for cor­po­rate T&T in re­spect of fu­ture com­pe­ti­tions. The min­istry stands ready to as­sist. Cor­po­rate T&T must now step up to the chal­lenge. It is an op­por­tu­ni­ty for busi­ness not to get ad­ver­tis­ing mileage, but to ex­er­cise their so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty,". "I urge busi­ness­peo­ple of T&T not to wait un­til our young women do well at these pageants to lend their sup­port, but like the Gov­ern­ment, to in­vest in T&T's youths now," she added.

Mc­Don­ald said Gov­ern­ment was of the clear view it had no place in the own­er­ship of the Miss World and Miss Uni­verse fran­chis­es.

"We main­tain they are well placed in the pri­vate sec­tor," Mc­Don­ald said. She said for­mer fran­chise hold­er Pe­ter Elias had ap­proached the min­istry in April to take over the two fran­chis­es since it had be­come a fi­nan­cial bur­den on him due to non-as­sis­tance from the pri­vate sec­tor. Mc Don­ald said Gov­ern­ment con­tact­ed two me­dia hous­es which had pre­vi­ous ex­pe­ri­ence in this, but both in­di­cat­ed that the ad­ver­tis­ing mar­ket was not sup­port­ive of such a ven­ture at this time. Mc Don­ald said T&T's pop­u­la­tion was rich in busi­ness spir­it. She said Gov­ern­ment had unswerv­ing­ly sup­port­ed the shows since 2006 with 72 per cent of con­tri­bu­tions while the oth­er 28 per cent was not forth­com­ing from the pri­vate sec­tor.

She out­lined Gov­ern­ment's con­tri­bu­tions to pageants since 2006, adding Gov­ern­ment had been pre­pared to con­tribute $300,000 in 2009:

�2 2006 - $300,000

�2 2007 - $325,000

�2 2008 - $584,000.