Chester Sam­bra­no

The Stage in the Sea set up for the re­cent To­ba­go Car­ni­val cost the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) al­most $2 mil­lion

The fig­ures were pro­duced by Sec­re­tary for In­fra­struc­ture, Quar­ries and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Trevor James dur­ing a sit­ting of the As­sem­bly on Thurs­day.

The stage, which is lo­cat­ed on the Scar­bor­ough Wa­ter­front, was con­struct­ed as a pic­ture-tak­ing lo­ca­tion for mas­quer­aders and on­look­ers dur­ing the re­cent­ly held To­ba­go Car­ni­val from Oc­to­ber 28-30.

Con­firm­ing the cost and con­trac­tor, James said,” The con­tract was award­ed for $1,758,350 con­tin­gency in­clud­ed.”

The con­trac­tor was Shuf­fle Equip­ment Rental.

How­ev­er, be­fore do­ing so, he de­fend­ed the project.

“We cre­at­ed in the re­gion a Car­ni­val prod­uct that was nev­er seen, where peo­ple were ac­tu­al­ly able to en­joy the fes­tiv­i­ties over the wa­ter, it has nev­er been done in the re­gion,” he said.

How­ev­er, Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Kelvon Mor­ris ques­tioned whether the stage was worth the spend.

“I was won­der­ing, 1.7 mil­lion dol­lars for a day to see rocks wash away in the sea, peo­ple can­not eat, peo­ple can­not get food, is this the best use of To­ba­go tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey?” Mor­ris asked.

How­ev­er, James said his de­gree was in Project Man­age­ment, not Eco­nom­ics.

“I do not know whether an over­all ex­pen­di­ture of 1.7 mil­lion dol­lars is counter-pro­duc­tive to the de­vel­op­ment of To­ba­go or whether that be­ing as­signed some­where else would change the so­cial prob­lem that we have,” he said.

In the lead-up to the Car­ni­val, there was some con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing the con­struc­tion of the stage.

Days be­fore the event, the THA had not re­ceived ap­proval from the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty.