Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion’s co­or­di­na­tor for the coun­ty Ca­roni, Carlis­ton “Ca­lyp­so Kerr,” says re­gion­al Car­ni­val bod­ies should be giv­en fund­ing to meet their bud­gets.

Kerr made the com­ment be­fore the start of Mon­day Night Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions host­ed by the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion Car­ni­val Com­mit­tee (CBCC). He said re­gion­al bod­ies in Cen­tral were do­ing an ex­cel­lent job and could have done more if they had re­ceived their full bud­gets from the NCC.

“The peo­ple in Cen­tral, I think what they ask for is be­cause they re­alise the po­ten­tial that they are deal­ing with,” Kerr told Guardian Me­dia.

“If they set out to do ‘X’ and they get three-quar­ters of ‘X’ or half of ‘X,’ they can on­ly do that much. When it’s time to crit­i­cise, every­body may want to crit­i­cise. If they pull off a mag­ic and get every­thing and every­thing goes well, every­body wants to jump on the train, they want to be part of that suc­cess­ful run­ning.”

Kerr said in­vest­ment in cul­ture to­day would bring pos­i­tive ben­e­fits in the fu­ture.

“It come like road con­struc­tion. If you need a road to go some­where, you don’t wait un­til lives are lost or cars get dam­age; so you re­pair it on time, you save lives, you save time and you are look­ing at the next ten years down the line or even 20.”

Mean­while, CBCC chair­man Re­nee Bai­ley said the com­mit­tee was no­ti­fied at the last minute by the NCC of a 25 per cent slash in their bud­get and had to ”scram­ble” to get funds from the pri­vate sec­tor.

Bai­ley said sev­er­al new bands came out for Kid­dies Car­ni­val, as the CBCC had reached out to var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties af­ter last year’s cel­e­bra­tions to boost par­tic­i­pa­tion.

Mon­day Night’s event was en­ti­tled Echoes of An­ces­try and fea­tured a stick fight­ing demon­stra­tion from the &T Stick Fight­ing Cul­tur­al Group, the Am­ri­tam Shak­ti Dancers, the Trop­i­cal An­gel Harps pan or­ches­tra, the Point Fortin Rhythm Sec­tion and the Shoot­ing Stars Tas­sa Group.