Mon­day's de­c­la­ra­tion of a State of Emerge­cy (SoE), is go­ing to have an im­pact on Car­ni­val and tourist ar­rivals for the fes­ti­val.

That is the view of Akua Lei­th, the di­rec­tor of busi­ness de­vel­op­ment and sales at pan man­u­fac­tur­er Mu­si­cal In­stru­men­tals of Trinidad and To­ba­go Com­pa­ny (MITTCO)

In an in­ter­view on Thurs­day, Lei­th said the an­nounce­ment would put for­eign­ers on alert.

"An SoE, in any sense of the words, means that some­thing is up," he said, "With or with­out cur­fews, it is send­ing a mes­sage to the wider pub­lic and the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket that Trinidad is deal­ing with some se­ri­ous is­sues. So that in it­self will af­fect op­er­a­tions across the board," Lei­th said.

"From Car­ni­val, which is go­ing in­to the sea­son of which the most amount of for­eign per­sons com­ing in, peo­ple will be skep­ti­cal and we can't shy away from that. So it's be­yond just pan, it's just gen­er­al op­er­a­tion, es­pe­cial­ly where we have our high­est in­flux for Car­ni­val, you will see a dip in that."

While Lei­th was con­cerned that it could im­pact the num­ber of vis­i­tors for Car­ni­val, he did see the need to ad­dress the crime sit­u­a­tion.

"On the oth­er hand, I think it's some­thing that is nec­es­sary, be­cause it's al­most like there's a pan­dem­ic of crime. When it comes to crime, as the Prime Min­is­ter said at one point in time, there's al­most like there's a health is­sue. We have to deal with that from that sense, and if that is the lev­el we have to go to, I think I have to give in to the point that it's nec­es­sary."

He said be­yond the crim­i­nal el­e­ments, the SoE means that the con­ver­sa­tion is now about all cit­i­zens hav­ing some of their rights be­ing tak­en away. This may mean some in­no­cent per­sons might be vic­tim to that as well, Lei­th said, adding that he hopes this would be lim­it­ed to ze­ro. He is sure that the SoE will af­fect op­er­a­tions across the board.

MITTCO is best known for the man­u­fac­tur­ing of steel pans. Lei­th, how­ev­er, not­ed that while many pop­u­lar pan yards are in hot spots, typ­i­cal­ly there are very few re­ports of a crime at those lo­ca­tions.

"I will say the pan yards, though, al­though we had a few in­ci­dents, the pan yards have al­ways been a safe haven. Some of the pan yards, which some­times we talk of as be­ing in at-risk neigh­bor­hoods, you nev­er saw any ills hap­pen­ing in those spaces.

"I don't think crim­i­nal el­e­ments go in­to those spaces in­ten­tion­al­ly to pose harm on the pan cir­cuits. So the pan yards, for me, have al­ways been that lev­el of con­trolled en­vi­ron­ment where you could safe­ly car­ry your kids," he said, adding that the in­creased po­lice pres­ence may even en­cour­age more vis­i­tors to these lo­ca­tions.

"You your­self could come and take a nice evening of sweet steel pan mu­sic while per­sons re­hearse. So with the SoE, it's even bet­ter be­caus the po­lice pres­ence around the ar­eas is now height­ened. But the pan yards have al­ways a safe haven from crime, as far as I ex­pe­ri­enced," Lei­th said.