Pan Trin­ba­go Pres­i­dent Bev­er­ley Ram­sey-Moore said yes­ter­day 2018 was par­tic­u­lar­ly chal­leng­ing for steel­bands and pan­nists.

“Bands have been fac­ing the chal­lenge even more as they have not yet re­ceived their as­sis­tance, that is main­ly be­cause the NCC (Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion) has not re­ceived its al­lo­ca­tions from Gov­ern­ment.

There­fore, Pan Trin­ba­go as one of the spe­cial in­ter­est groups has not yet re­ceived its al­lo­ca­tions. Usu­al­ly, bands will re­ceive that as­sis­tance around two months or so be­fore the com­pe­ti­tion,” she said.

She said the Panora­ma pre­lim­i­nar­ies had al­ready start­ed on Jan­u­ary 22, and the or­gan­i­sa­tion had not yet been able to give bands that start-up fund­ing be­cause it had not yet re­ceived a draw­down on the al­lo­ca­tion.

Ram­sey-Moore said de­spite the fi­nan­cial chal­lenge, the pan body was pleased that the bands are prepar­ing to par­tic­i­pate in the fes­ti­val.

Ram­sey-Moore, who is al­so the man­ag­er of one of the old­est steel­bands in To­ba­go, 67-year-old Katzen­jam­mers Steel Or­ches­tra, said the band was al­so af­fect­ed by the end of fund­ing from the for­mer oil com­pa­ny Petrotrin.

Up un­til 2018, Petrotrin pro­vid­ed full spon­sor­ship Katzen­jam­mers and sev­er­al oth­er bands. This fund­ing stopped with the clo­sure of Petrotrin.

She said giv­en the band’s long-stand­ing re­la­tion­ship with Petrotrin, it was on­ly fair that rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the com­pa­ny should meet with band mem­bers, as they had promised to do, and have some sort of dis­cus­sion.

Ram­sey-Moore said even though the com­pa­ny could not pro­vide full spon­sor­ship, bands should not have been dropped so un­cer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly.

She said the bands would have pro­vid­ed mileage fos­ter­ing good­will with their spon­sors but al­so to their com­mu­ni­ties.

She said the steel­pan was the na­tion­al in­stru­ment and a source of pride and she ap­plaud­ed all those bands who per­se­vered un­der the dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tions.

Ram­sey-Moore said one of the things that must hap­pen mov­ing for­ward for Pan Trin­ba­go was that it must not be com­pe­ti­tion dri­ven but com­mu­ni­ty dri­ven.

She ex­plained that when bands are com­pe­ti­tion dri­ven, they will wait for one par­tic­u­lar time of the year to ex­cel when there should be pro­grammes for them to per­form for the en­tire year.

Ram­sey-Moore said that was the fo­cus of the new Pan Trin­ba­go.

Its aim was to in­spire and em­pow­er its mem­bers to be­come self-sus­tain­able, cre­ate wealth and the or­gan­i­sa­tion will be work­ing with them to achieve this, she added.

She said when look­ing at the pan move­ment, there was a new dy­nam­ic with dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories of youth par­tic­i­pat­ing. The or­gan­i­sa­tion must do more for them to car­ry pan to the world stage.

Ram­sey-Moore said the board mem­bers pledged to take Pan Trin­ba­go by its boot­straps and lift it out of the hole it now found it­self and put it on the moun­tain top.

She said pan was a way of life and Pan Trin­ba­go was a vi­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion in the gov­er­nance of T&T.