Renu­ka Singh

Taste of Car­ni­val has turned sour for the Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­son­ian Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO) as there is a threat to abort this year’s Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Monarch com­pe­ti­tion over lim­it­ed fund­ing for prizes.

Head of TU­CO Ains­ley King con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that he had pulled the plug af­ter ten com­peti­tors had per­formed be­fore the judges at the Grand Stand, Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, on Fri­day night.

“I dis­cov­ered that the bud­get re­mained at $1.5 mil­lion even though we de­clared that it would not be suf­fi­cient. We are try­ing to work with them,” King said.

Talks be­tween TU­CO and the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion aimed at re­solv­ing the sit­u­a­tion were dead­locked up to late yes­ter­day

“We cut, we cut to fit in­to the small­est bud­get we could fit in­to,” King said.

“They de­cid­ed to hold on to that and I de­cid­ed to call my peo­ple and bring a halt to the au­di­tions. To stop and post­pone it un­til fur­ther no­tice un­til we get clar­i­ty.”

King said what was be­ing put be­fore them by the NCC did not make any sense.

“So to avoid any kind of prob­lems down the road, that we go in­to an arrange­ment that we stage an event that we do not have fi­nances to cov­er, prizes and oth­er­wise, it was just a sud­den de­ci­sion to stop the au­di­tions and post­pone it un­til we come to some kind of sen­si­ble way for­ward,” he said.

King said TU­CO was not pro­vid­ed with any mon­ey but what was pro­posed was $1.5 mil­lion. Even in the scaled-down ver­sion, the tent would run up to $1.2 mil­lion, which left $300,000.

“It can­not pay the prizes. Some­thing con­tin­u­ing not to make sense. It is im­pos­si­ble to have the com­pe­ti­tion us­ing the $1.5 mil­lion,” he said.

King said he met with the TU­CO coun­cil and they are ex­pect­ed to meet again to­mor­row. Ef­forts were be­ing made by the NCC to see if they could carve out mon­ey from the in­fra­struc­ture.

“We are wait­ing on this meet­ing on Mon­day to see what is the way for­ward,” said King who in­sist­ed the ca­lyp­so­ni­ans were not to blame as they had noth­ing to do with the plan­ning and bud­get­ing of the Taste of Car­ni­val.

He ex­plained that TU­CO had “scaled” the prize mon­ey way back just to make things work and had de­ter­mined a $200,000 first-place prize.

“You see the way ne­go­ti­a­tion is go­ing? It is very in­con­sis­tent be­cause we wasn’t the ones to de­cide to have this thing in the first place,” he said.

“We were not the ones who de­cid­ed it was three weeks of events, we were not the ones who de­cid­ed that we should put com­pe­ti­tion in.”

King said he re­mained hope­ful that “peo­ple would come to their sens­es and every­body will try to work to­geth­er in the best in­ter­est of the T&T mec­ca of Car­ni­val and avoid them­selves look­ing stu­pid to the rest of the world. I am hop­ing that peo­ple un­der­stand that this is what is at risk.”

There are re­ports that of the $15 mil­lion al­lo­cat­ed for the Taste of Car­ni­val, more than $12 mil­lion was spent on in­fra­struc­ture and oth­er lo­gis­tics, in­clud­ing the con­tro­ver­sial pods on the north side of the Sa­van­nah.

On Fri­day, of­fi­cials from TU­CO and the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mit­tee (NCC) were locked in a meet­ing to de­ter­mine how to get the com­pe­ti­tion back on but it was dead­locked.

Shows run by TU­CO make up a sig­nif­i­cant part of the ac­tiv­i­ties planned for Taste of Car­ni­val. The var­i­ous ca­lyp­so tents will be the main at­trac­tions at Queen’s Hall and Na­pari­ma Bowl up to Feb­ru­ary. Oth­er events in­clude Ca­lyp­so Fi­es­ta at Na­pari­ma Bowl, San Fer­nan­do on Feb­ru­ary 20, Kaiso­ra­ma on Feb­ru­ary 23 at Car­ni­val City, Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, and the fi­nals of the Ca­lyp­so Monarch com­pe­ti­tion, a ma­jor com­po­nent of Di­manche Gras at Car­ni­val City on Feb­ru­ary 27.

The Ca­lyp­so Monarch pre­lim­i­nar­ies, which start­ed at noon on Fri­day be­fore TU­CO pulled the plug, did not con­tin­ue yes­ter­day as orig­i­nal­ly planned. Al­so hang­ing in the bal­ance as a re­sult of the im­passe be­tween TU­CO and NCC is the Na­tion­al Ex­tem­po Monarch com­pe­ti­tion pre­lim­i­nar­ies which were due to take place to­mor­row at the Gar­den The­atre, Queen’s Hall.

Nei­ther NCC chair­man Win­ston “Gyp­sy” Pe­ters nor Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell re­spond­ed to calls for com­ment yes­ter­day.