In­nis Fran­cis

Min­is­ter of Cul­ture and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Michelle Ben­jamin has pledged that Point Fortin’s Bor­ough Day cel­e­bra­tions will grow “big­ger and bet­ter” in the years ahead.

Ben­jamin made the state­ment at the close of the new­ly launched ini­tia­tive, Fu­sion, which formed part of this year’s fes­tiv­i­ties.

She com­mend­ed Point Fortin MP Ernesto Ke­sar for con­cep­tu­al­is­ing the event, not­ing that it was de­signed to mir­ror the pop­u­lar Fla­va Vil­lage held in Port-of-Spain dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son.

Fu­sion, which ran from April 25, cul­mi­nat­ed with a high-en­er­gy show­case of lo­cal en­ter­tain­ers at Kalloo Road, Point Fortin.

Ad­dress­ing the crowd fol­low­ing an elec­tri­fy­ing per­for­mance by La­dy La­va, Ben­jamin praised the spir­it of the com­mu­ni­ty.

“Point Fortin is love, and I am proud of your MP. South is love, and what is hap­pen­ing here tonight is tru­ly cul­ture,” she said.

“Point has earned its place on the na­tion­al cal­en­dar, and I am proud to be here. My min­istry is com­mit­ted to mak­ing this big­ger and bet­ter next year. Point Fortin, let’s par­ty.”

The min­is­ter’s re­marks come against the back­drop of fi­nan­cial con­cerns raised in the lead-up to the Bor­ough Day cel­e­bra­tions.

Point Fortin May­or Clyde James had pub­licly out­lined what he de­scribed as sig­nif­i­cant fi­nan­cial strain on the bor­ough cor­po­ra­tion, in­clud­ing debts of up to $3M. He not­ed that al­though some ar­rears had been re­duced, on­ly $76,000 had been al­lo­cat­ed for this year’s cel­e­bra­tions. Re­quests for ad­di­tion­al sup­port from var­i­ous min­istries, he said, went unan­swered, while Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um, a ma­jor op­er­a­tor in the bor­ough, de­clined spon­sor­ship.

Ke­sar, how­ev­er, clar­i­fied that Fu­sion was a sep­a­rate ini­tia­tive. He ex­plained that in­cor­po­rat­ing it in­to the cor­po­ra­tion’s of­fi­cial pro­gramme would have re­quired for­mal ap­proval.

The mul­ti-night event fea­tured a di­verse line­up, in­clud­ing Reg­gae Night, Chut­ney Night, R&B Night and Fu­sion Love. Per­form­ers in­clud­ed Jadel, Ki­mi, Mud­dy from Grena­da, Chris­to, Lyri­cal, Yung Bred­da and La­dy La­va, draw­ing strong crowds and adding mo­men­tum to the bor­ough’s cel­e­bra­tions.