Shal­iza Has­sanali

CEO of Southex Events Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd George Singh is ques­tion­ing the in­equity in the dis­tri­b­u­tion of prizes for 2010 Car­ni­val's pre­mier shows. Yes­ter­day, Singh queried why the first-prize win­ners of this year's Pow­er So­ca Monarch, Groovy So­ca Monarch and Ca­lyp­so Monarch were tak­ing home more mon­ey than the Chut­ney So­ca Monarch. To put salt in the wound Singh said, some of his Car­ni­val spon­sors have al­so cut back on spon­sor­ship. Among those is bmo­bile. From a hefty $1 mil­lion first prize last year, the win­ner of the Pow­er So­ca Monarch will now walk away with $630,000, while the Ca­lyp­so Monarch's purse will be $500,000. This year, the first prize of the Groovy So­ca Monarch is in­creased from $150,000 to $200,000. The Na­tion­al Chut­ney So­ca Monarch prize re­mains at $200,000. Both the So­ca Monarch and Groovy So­ca Monarch con­tests are held on the same stage.

At a re­cent meet­ing with Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Cul­ture and Gen­der Af­fairs, Mar­lene Mc Don­ald, Singh said he had asked that the prize mon­ey for his event be raised to $500,000–on par with the oth­er shows. Singh said he was told that the prize mon­ey could not be im­proved up­on this year and that he should be pa­tient. "Why is there is no eq­ui­ty with the prizes?"

Singh ar­gues that while William Munroe, pri­vate pro­mot­er of Caribbean Pres­tige Hold­ings (CPH), was hand­ed $2 mil­lion by the min­istry for the So­ca Monarch bash, Southex "had re­ceived not even half of that fig­ure" to host the Na­tion­al Chut­ney So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tion which has two shows, the pre­lim­i­nar­ies hav­ing been held yes­ter­day, and the fi­nals. Singh says he can't un­der­stand why one pro­mot­er would re­ceive $2 mil­lion, while an­oth­er who has to stage two sep­a­rate shows has been al­lo­cat­ed less than half of what CPF had re­ceived.

"We have the same ex­pens­es. They must re­mem­ber that I have an ad­di­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion to or­gan­ise. Our event is just as big, im­por­tant and ex­pen­sive, but yet we are not get­ting the same prize mon­ey across the board." Singh said for over two years he has been wait­ing for his equal share of the pie. "I have been pa­tient for many years, but I am get­ting tired of be­ing pa­tient." Singh is sur­prised to see that bmo­bile has al­so cut his spon­sor­ship by 25 per cent. "bmo­bile told me they were cut­ting all Car­ni­val spon­sor­ship, yet they left So­ca Monarch un­touched." Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Graeme Suite, man­ag­er me­dia re­la­tions and cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions, ad­mit­ted that while bmo­bile had in fact cut Singh's spon­sor­ship, they were not the on­ly one to do so. "We are not a ti­tle spon­sor of the Na­tion­al Chut­ney So­ca Monarch and we did not sign any con­tract with him." Suite said they main­tained their spon­sor­ship with So­ca Monarch be­cause they signed a con­tract with CPH. Suite said bmo­bile in­vest­ments in Car­ni­val 2010 re­main the same as last year.