Sean Nero

Fifty rep­re­sen­ta­tives from T&T's mas com­mu­ni­ty can now ac­cess an es­ti­mat­ed $1 mil­lion worth of free In­ter­net ac­cess, plus busi­ness man­age­ment and in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy train­ing as an am­bi­tious "Car­ni­val hub" ini­tia­tive be­tween the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val De­vel­op­ment Foun­da­tion (NCDF) and the T&T Coali­tion of Ser­vices In­dus­tries (TTC­SI) takes ef­fect. Un­der an arrange­ment worked out be­tween the TTC­SI and Blink Broad­band, mas-band rep­re­sen­ta­tives will now be able to present a bet­ter on­line pres­ence to stim­u­late the coun­try's e-com­merce sec­tor through their work. But for those whose busi­ness acu­men needs to be re­freshed or up­grad­ed, the NCDF has se­cured a com­mit­ment from the Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny, too, un­der which they will be pro­vid­ed with train­ing. As part of the 18-month project, eight mas bands re­ceived desk­top com­put­ers cour­tesy Blink Broad­Band last week at TSTT's Hos­pi­tal­i­ty Suite, Queen's Park Oval, Port-of-Spain.

"We are re­al­ly pleased about to­day," said Mahin­dra Satram-Ma­haraj, chair­man of the NCDF. "It has been frus­trat­ing on my end, but mo­ti­vat­ing­ly so. Work­ing with TTC­SI, they un­der­stand my con­cerns and the con­cerns of my mem­ber­ship in hav­ing this project done as quick­ly as pos­si­ble." He said the Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny had agreed to pro­vide the train­ing for all of those in­volved in this project, both in in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy and in busi­ness. "That's a huge cost. It's over $400,000-$500,000 that they are putting out for us. He ex­plained the over­all ob­jec­tive. "Your mas band, your de­sign­ing op­er­a­tion, your ar­ti­san­ship, is, in fact, a busi­ness, and we want to place that in a po­si­tion that you could be able to be suc­cess­ful, to the ex­tent of ex­port­ing your ser­vices glob­al­ly. We are on­ly 1.3 mil­lion here. There are a cou­ple bil­lion over there and they have mon­ey. There is a fol­low­ing for cul­ture and there is a fol­low­ing for Car­ni­val." He re­mind­ed the au­di­ence that T&T's Car­ni­val was vot­ed the best in the world for 2011, while the West In­di­an Day Car­ni­val (Labour Day) and Not­ting Hill ranked fourth and sev­enth, re­spec­tive­ly. T&T-in­spired Car­ni­val, he said, where the di­as­po­ra was play­ing a crit­i­cal role, was al­so mak­ing waves.