The Min­istry of Tourism has opened up a way for cul­tur­al work­ers wish­ing to trav­el abroad to par­tic­i­pate in rev­enue-earn­ing events, to do so more eas­i­ly.

The min­istry said in a state­ment yes­ter­day that work­ers in cul­ture and art such as event man­agers, band­lead­ers, artistes and pan men de­sirous of trav­el­ling abroad for events and fes­ti­vals, will ben­e­fit from pri­or­i­ty ac­cess to vac­ci­na­tions and trav­el ex­emp­tions to de­part from and re­turn to Trinidad and To­ba­go.

It said that Cab­i­net ap­proved the mea­sures pro­posed by the Min­istry of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts to fa­cil­i­tate cul­tur­al work­ers who wish to pur­sue tem­po­rary em­ploy­ment for their work en­gage­ments abroad.

“Cities across the Unit­ed States as well as is­lands with­in the re­gion are emerg­ing from COVID-19 re­stric­tions with the re­open­ing of their en­ter­tain­ment sec­tors en­abled by high vac­ci­na­tion rates among their pop­u­la­tion. With the cre­ative sec­tor hav­ing been af­fect­ed by the COVID-19 reg­u­la­tions im­ple­ment­ed in March 2020, this ini­tia­tive gives the sec­tor the abil­i­ty to re­cov­er by ac­cept­ing book­ings and com­fort­ably tak­ing ad­van­tage of work op­por­tu­ni­ties in var­i­ous over­seas mar­kets,” the min­istry said.

It added that many cul­tur­al work­ers have al­ready made plans to make their year­ly trek to events such as New York’s Labour Day Cel­e­bra­tions, Mi­a­mi’s Car­ni­val and Vin­cy Mas in St Vin­cent, which fea­ture tal­ent from Trinidad and To­ba­go who are in high de­mand as head­line acts.

Pub­lic health re­stric­tions, closed bor­ders and the can­cel­la­tion of Car­ni­val 2021 have se­vere­ly im­pact­ed the cul­ture and arts sec­tors over the last 14 months and pre­vent­ed cul­tur­al work­ers from be­ing able to work re­sult­ing in a sig­nif­i­cant loss of earn­ings.

Senator Randall Mitchell Minister of Tourism, Culture and the Arts

“We’re cog­nizant of the ef­fects of the virus on lives and liveli­hoods and we’ve in­ter­vened, where pos­si­ble, to com­bat the loss of earn­ings for Cul­tur­al Work­ers. The pro­vi­sion of the Cul­tur­al Re­lief Grant to cre­atives and the re­duced rental cost for Na­tion­al Per­for­mance Spaces were just some of the mea­sures we in­tro­duced to cush­ion the neg­a­tive im­pact, how­ev­er, with the glob­al mu­sic and en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try slow­ly com­ing back on stream, we feel that this pro­gram is ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary at this time to bring time­ly as­sis­tance and re­lief to our Cul­tur­al Work­ers,” Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts, Ran­dall Mitchell said.

Un­der the arrange­ment, the Min­istry of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts will utilise li­ai­son of­fi­cers to sup­port both the Min­istry of Health and the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to en­sure that both the vac­ci­na­tion and ex­emp­tion process­es are easy to ac­cess.

The process will re­quire that all re­turn­ing cul­tur­al work­ers be sub­ject to the usu­al Min­istry of Health guide­lines and pro­to­cols and will be re­quired to pro­vide a valid neg­a­tive COVID-19 PCR test tak­en with­in 72 hours be­fore their re­turn flight to Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The state­ment by the Min­istry said that it had al­ready en­gaged ma­jor stake­hold­er groups such as the Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO), PanTrin­ba­go and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Pro­mot­ers As­so­ci­a­tion to en­sure that its mem­bers who usu­al­ly trav­el abroad to take part in events and fes­ti­vals are part of the pri­or­i­ty group. It said that to date, the Min­istry of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts has sub­mit­ted close to 200 names of cul­tur­al work­ers to ac­cess vac­ci­na­tions in time for their en­gage­ments abroad even as the Min­istry of Health is set to ac­cel­er­ate its vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme with­in the com­ing weeks.