Richard?Lord

Pan Trin­ba­go is open­ly ac­cus­ing the Gov­ern­ment - via the Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Cul­ture and the Arts and the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion - of try­ing a hos­tile takeover of their or­gan­i­sa­tion and oth­er stake­hold­er bod­ies on the eve of Car­ni­val 2017.

Pan Trin­ba­go of­fi­cials made the claim in a press re­lease yes­ter­day, hours af­ter meet­ing to dis­cuss an an­nounce­ment by Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly on Wednes­day that Gov­ern­ment plans to con­duct a foren­sic au­dit of the body af­ter Car­ni­val. Pan Trin­ba­go was said to be ow­ing close to 31 mil­lion at the start of the year, ac­cord­ing to NCC pres­i­dent Ken­ny De Sil­va.

In a strong­ly-word­ed re­lease, Pan Trin­ba­go PRO Michael Joseph said the Gov­ern­ment and NCC were "hell bent on usurp­ing the role of Pan Trin­ba­go and the two oth­er ma­jor in­ter­est groups (Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans Or­gan­i­sa­tion and the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Bands As­so­ci­a­tion) in the na­tion­al fes­ti­val and the au­thor­i­ty giv­en to them by acts of Par­lia­ment."

He said they are view­ing "the move by the min­istry and the NCC as a hos­tile takeover of the Car­ni­val in­ter­est groups."

Pan Trin­ba­go gen­er­al sec­re­tary Richard Forteau said re­cent­ly that the Gov­ern­ment had failed to ap­point mem­bers of the three stake­hold­er Car­ni­val bod­ies to the NCC as was re­quired un­der the law.

Yes­ter­day, Joseph said the in­stru­ment and the steel­band move­ment had come a long way over the many years. He said pan­men were once la­belled as "rouges, vagabonds and out­casts" but de­spite that and oth­er strug­gles, the art form had been "nur­tured and de­vel­oped from noth­ing to a po­ten­tial bil­lion dol­lar in­dus­try."

He said the lat­est move by the Dr Kei­th Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion was "an in­fringe­ment of the right to en­joy the full­ness of our her­itage in­stru­ment that was carved out of the blood sweat and tears of our pi­o­neers."

Joseph added: "Sud­den­ly to them we are un­able to man­age any­thing and a foren­sic au­dit will be done on Pan Trin­ba­go af­ter the Car­ni­val."

He said Pan Trin­ba­go was "not averse to any au­dit" in­sist­ing that the steel­band body has pro­vid­ed au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments to the min­istry and NCC over the past 25 years.

Joseph re­peat­ed a state­ment made by Forteau weeks ago that the NCC had not sub­mit­ted an au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ment since 2004, al­leg­ing too it (NCC) was in debt to the tune of over $200 mil­lion.

Gadb­sy-Dol­ly has re­peat­ed­ly ex­pressed con­cern about the man­age­ment of Pan Trin­ba­go by the ex­ec­u­tive, which is be­ing led by pres­i­dent Kei­th Di­az, who is now on leave due to ill­ness.

Joseph said the lat­est de­vel­op­ment could ad­verse­ly af­fect the in­dus­try for years to come and end­ed the state­ment by say­ing: "Thanks in ad­vance for your time­ly in­ter­ven­tion to avert an un­nec­es­sary and volatile sit­u­a­tion."

In re­cent weeks, pan play­ers have been de­mand­ing the im­me­di­ate res­ig­na­tion of the Pan Trin­ba­go ex­ec­u­tive af­ter sev­er­al is­sues of mis­man­age­ment of funds, in­clud­ing for the pur­chase of a lux­u­ry car, and the lack of pay­ment to play­ers were raised.

In fact, the play­ers had threat­ened to boy­cott this year's Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion but at a spe­cial­ly con­vened meet­ing at City Hall re­cent­ly it was agreed to sus­pend all protest to al­low for the stag­ing of the na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment last night, how­ev­er, Gads­by-Dol­ly de­nied there was any­thing hos­tile or sin­is­ter in the move.

"Nei­ther the min­istry nor NCC has been hos­tile to­wards Pan Trin­ba­go. No at­tempts have been made to in­ter­vene in the af­fairs in Pan Trin­ba­go oth­er than those which in­volve the ex­pen­di­ture of pub­lic funds," she said.

"As cus­to­di­ans of the pub­lic purse, that is our re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. The tax­pay­ers of this coun­try de­serve noth­ing less. Any or­gan­i­sa­tion re­ceiv­ing pub­lic funds must be sub­ject to rea­son­able lev­els of fi­nan­cial scruti­ny. The present cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing Pan Trin­ba­go make this in­creas­ing­ly clear."

She added, "Far from want­i­ng to take over the or­gan­i­sa­tion, the Gov­ern­ment and the NCC stand ready to sup­port them and the wider pan fra­ter­ni­ty as they un­der­take the in­sti­tu­tion­al strength­en­ing nec­es­sary to de­liv­er on their very crit­i­cal man­date."

Ef­forts to con­tact De Sil­va were un­suc­cess­ful. How­ev­er, in an in­ter­view on CNC3's Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, he said he sup­port­ed an au­dit of all Car­ni­val stake­hold­ers fund­ed by Gov­ern­ment.