Cul­ture and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Michelle Ben­jamin has or­dered the new Board of Com­mis­sion­ers at the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) to take im­me­di­ate ac­tion to fix the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s fi­nan­cial and op­er­a­tional cri­sis, warn­ing there will be no grace pe­ri­od un­der her lead­er­ship.

In a state­ment is­sued to­day, Ben­jamin re­spond­ed to mount­ing com­plaints from Car­ni­val stake­hold­ers who have not been paid for ser­vices pro­vid­ed dur­ing Car­ni­val 2025. De­spite the NCC se­cur­ing a two hun­dred mil­lion dol­lar loan in April to meet those oblig­a­tions, one hun­dred and sev­en­ty-eight mil­lion dol­lars re­mains out­stand­ing.

“The suc­cess of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Car­ni­val can­not and will not be de­railed by poor ad­min­is­tra­tion,” Ben­jamin said. “We owe it to our stake­hold­ers, our com­mu­ni­ties, and our cul­ture to en­sure that re­sources are used re­spon­si­bly, trans­par­ent­ly, and with max­i­mum im­pact.”

To ad­dress the is­sue, Min­is­ter Ben­jamin has sum­moned the board to a meet­ing on Tues­day 29 Ju­ly 2025. The ses­sion will fo­cus on four key di­rec­tives:

• Im­me­di­ate ini­ti­a­tion of an in­ter­nal au­dit in­to NCC’s fi­nances and over­all op­er­a­tions

• Sub­mis­sion of a re­port out­lin­ing the au­dit’s find­ings and pro­posed so­lu­tions

• De­vel­op­ment of a plan to set­tle all out­stand­ing stake­hold­er pay­ments from Car­ni­val 2025

• Fi­nal­i­sa­tion of time­lines and de­liv­er­ables for Car­ni­val 2026

Min­is­ter Ben­jamin said the NCC’s fi­nan­cial cri­sis may be part of a wider trend in­her­it­ed from the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion. She claimed that short-term bor­row­ing was used to se­lec­tive­ly pay con­trac­tors in the lead-up to the 2025 Gen­er­al Elec­tion, leav­ing agen­cies like the NCC in fis­cal dis­ar­ray.

“What we are see­ing at NCC is not an iso­lat­ed is­sue,” she said. “There ap­pears to have been a broad­er pat­tern, where in­di­vid­u­als un­der the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion fa­cil­i­tat­ed short-term bor­row­ing to make pay­ments to se­lect­ed con­trac­tors.

Many of these trans­ac­tions were ex­e­cut­ed in the lead-up to the 2025 Gen­er­al Elec­tion and func­tioned as tar­get­ed cash in­jec­tions to pre­ferred en­ti­ties. That has now left in­sti­tu­tions like NCC grap­pling with se­ri­ous fi­nan­cial strain and rep­u­ta­tion­al chal­lenges, chal­lenges that now must be ur­gent­ly ad­dressed.”

With Car­ni­val 2026 now des­ig­nat­ed a na­tion­al pri­or­i­ty, Min­is­ter Ben­jamin pledged full over­sight and sup­port from her Min­istry. “There will be no wastage, no de­lays, and no ex­cus­es, the great­est show on earth will be suc­cess­ful un­der my re­mit.”