SASCHA WIL­SON

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

De­throned Miss Grand T&T 2025 Tama­ra Per­sad is re­ject­ing claims by Stolen Pro­duc­tions Ltd, the fran­chise hold­er for Miss Grand In­ter­na­tion­al, that she could not ful­fil her du­ties.

The com­pa­ny of­fered that ex­pla­na­tion in re­sponse to com­plaints by 17-year-old Per­sad that she was un­fair­ly stripped of the ti­tle with­out any of­fi­cial no­tice.

In a press re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day, Stolen Pro­duc­tions stat­ed, “The judges’ choice and crowned win­ner of Miss Grand Trinidad and To­ba­go 2025, Miss Rio Claro, Tama­ra Per­sad, is re­gret­tably un­able to ful­fil her role as the na­tion’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive at the in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion.”

The com­pa­ny stat­ed that it in­vest­ed heav­i­ly in the prepa­ra­tion of all del­e­gates for the in­ter­na­tion­al stage, which it said in­clud­ed an ex­cep­tion­al­ly qual­i­fied lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al team. The com­pa­ny fur­ther stat­ed that pageantry re­quires in­tense com­mit­ment to per­son­al de­vel­op­ment and con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tions as rep­re­sent­ing T&T is not a task that can be tak­en light­ly. “In light of this, SPL stat­ed that it care­ful­ly re­viewed the place­ment of run­ners-up.”

How­ev­er, it said the first run­ner-up was, at the time of de­ci­sion-mak­ing, en­gaged with pri­or in­de­pen­dent com­mit­ments out­side of its scope. “There­fore, in the in­ter­est of en­sur­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go is proud­ly rep­re­sent­ed, SPL has ap­point­ed the 2nd Run­ner-Up, Miss Grand To­ba­go 2025, Monique Joseph, to as­sume the du­ties of Miss Grand Trinidad and To­ba­go 2025 and rep­re­sent the na­tion at Miss Grand In­ter­na­tion­al this year.”

It added, “We al­so ac­knowl­edge their trust and con­fi­dence in SPL’s de­ci­sion-mak­ing process, which is guid­ed by fair­ness, trans­paren­cy, and the com­mit­ment to en­sur­ing that Trinidad and To­ba­go is well rep­re­sent­ed on the glob­al stage.” Stolen Pro­duc­tions said it now looks for­ward to pre­sent­ing Joseph as the T&T rep­re­sen­ta­tive in the Miss Grand In­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion sched­uled to take place in Thai­land from Sep­tem­ber 29 to Oc­to­ber 19.

How­ev­er, Per­sad, who was crowned win­ner af­ter out­shin­ing 15 oth­er con­tes­tants dur­ing the com­pe­ti­tion at C3 Mall in San Fer­nan­do on Ju­ly 12, has rub­bished the com­pa­ny’s ex­pla­na­tion.

“As the right­ful­ly crowned win­ner, I have ful­filled all oblig­a­tions and re­quire­ments as out­lined by the or­gan­i­sa­tion. De­spite my ef­forts to com­mu­ni­cate with the team, I have of­ten been met with un­avail­abil­i­ty, which has hin­dered our progress,” said Per­sad in a What­sApp re­sponse yes­ter­day.

She claimed that giv­en the pro­longed pe­ri­od of un­reach­a­bil­i­ty, span­ning sev­er­al weeks, she took the ini­tia­tive to in­vest in her per­son­al growth and de­vel­op­ment to en­sure she was ad­e­quate­ly pre­pared for the in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion.

Per­sad al­so claimed she was not pro­vid­ed with the lev­el of in­vest­ment and sup­port that had been promised. “In fact, I have not seen any sig­nif­i­cant de­vel­op­ment or op­por­tu­ni­ties ex­tend­ed to me since be­ing crowned. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, I ex­pe­ri­enced un­pro­fes­sion­al be­hav­iour dur­ing pub­lic speak­ing class­es, where I was sub­ject­ed to bul­ly­ing. This was wit­nessed not on­ly by my­self but al­so by oth­er del­e­gates.”

The teenag­er claimed that af­ter she de­clined to an­swer the teacher’s ques­tions, which she deemed as per­son­al and ir­rel­e­vant to the pageant, she was per­ceived as “dif­fi­cult” and “un­coach­able.”

Per­sad has re­quest­ed that Stolen Pro­duc­tions con­duct a thor­ough re­view of the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing its de­ci­sion and was hope­ful that they could work to­geth­er to re­solve the mat­ter am­i­ca­bly.