RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

A week af­ter tragedy struck at San Fer­nan­do Hill which re­sult­ed in the death of a 39-year-old teacher, an­oth­er event was held amid tight safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures.

The high­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed re­turn of the Man­ning Fete lived up to ex­pec­ta­tions, with in­creased se­cu­ri­ty to en­sure there was no re­peat of the tragedy which oc­curred on Jan­u­ary 28.

It was then that Re­nee Mitchell slipped and fell al­most 150 feet down the hill. She died at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal af­ter be­ing res­cued by fire of­fi­cers. She had been down the hill for sev­en hours be­fore she was tak­en for med­ical care.

Mitchell, a moth­er of two, had been at­tend­ing the Il­lu­sion’s Solset on the Hill fete when she re­port­ed­ly went to re­lieve her­self in some shrubs near the cliff.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia on Sun­day, fete pro­mot­er Nigel Cout­ti­er said there was a great em­pha­sis on safe­ty fol­low­ing Mitchell’s trag­ic death.

Cout­ti­er said he was pleased with the suc­cess of the fete which had “both highs and lows.”

“There was a great turnout. Peo­ple had fun, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing the per­for­mances of Mi­cal Te­ja and Farmer Nap­py,” Cout­ti­er said.

Em­pha­sis­ing safe­ty, he not­ed: “We had Fire Ser­vices, TTPS, the Ca­nine Unit and pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty to man cer­tain ar­eas which were im­pos­si­ble to fence around.”

He said dur­ing the fete, peo­ple were ad­vised to make use of the wash­room fa­cil­i­ties that were pro­vid­ed.

The Man­ning Fete re­turned af­ter a sev­en-year hia­tus fol­low­ing the pass­ing of Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning in 2016. But the event en­coun­tered ear­ly set­backs with sound sys­tem glitch­es af­fect­ing per­for­mances, no­tably dis­rupt­ing Su­per Blue’s set, ne­ces­si­tat­ing three restarts.

How­ev­er, Farmer Nap­py came to the res­cue, cap­ti­vat­ing the crowd with a nos­tal­gic jour­ney through his Xtat­ic days along­side Machel Mon­tano. Mi­cal Te­ja fol­lowed, ig­nit­ing cheers with his 2024 hit DNA eras­ing ear­li­er sound is­sues from mem­o­ry.

The high­light of the fete was when Bri­an Man­ning, son of the late for­mer prime min­is­ter, took to the stage along with Cout­ti­er to launch their in­au­gur­al so­ca hit Fes­tive. Cout­ti­er syn­chro­nized rhyth­mic pumps to the in­fec­tious so­ca beat while Man­ning en­thu­si­as­ti­cal­ly com­mand­ed the stage.

Ex­press­ing grat­i­tude and com­mit­ment to con­tin­u­ing his fa­ther’s lega­cy, Man­ning said he planned to host the fete an­nu­al­ly.

Con­clud­ing the night with flair, the big band Traf­fic en­sured a mem­o­rable come­back much to the de­light of PNM stal­warts Hazel Man­ning and San Fer­nan­do May­or Robert Paris. Pa­trons said de­spite a slow start, the Man­ning Fete end­ed as a re­sound­ing suc­cess, de­liv­er­ing every­thing they de­sired.