Carisa Lee

Re­porter

Carisa.Lee@cnc3.co.tt

Min­is­ter of De­fence Wayne Struge says a fi­nal de­ci­sion on the itin­er­ary for dance­hall su­per­star Adidjah “Vy­bz Kar­tel” Palmer should be made soon, but says his min­istry on­ly re­ceived a new sched­ule yes­ter­day.

“On­ly a cou­ple of hours ago, we re­ceived their amend­ed itin­er­ary, which we are con­sid­er­ing giv­en that it doesn’t ad­dress a ma­jor con­cern,” Sturge said.

In a press re­lease is­sued last Fri­day, Struge said a ma­jor con­cern was the al­lo­ca­tion of scarce re­sources for the safe­ty of the artiste and his en­tourage dur­ing his vis­it for next week­end’s con­cert. He said this could not be pro­vid­ed for the en­tire pe­ri­od of his vis­it, and that was why a de­ci­sion to cur­tail his stay and move­ments was made.

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, spokesman for con­cert or­gan­is­ers Ja­cho En­ter­tain­ment, Odane An­der­son, said he was yet to re­ceive of­fi­cial cor­re­spon­dence from Sturge on any re­stric­tions ahead of the con­cert.

“I don’t know if it is true or not, it is just so­cial me­dia for now, so when I get it in my hand, then I could say,” he said.

Last Wednes­day, Sturge or­dered re­stric­tions to Palmer’s orig­i­nal itin­er­ary ahead of his ar­rival in T&T on May 26.

Through an im­mi­gra­tion or­der, the De­fence Min­is­ter blanked Palmer a morn­ing ra­dio in­ter­view, a mid­day TV ap­pear­ance, and a lo­cal press drop-in on May 27.

He al­so blocked a meet and greet, a vis­it to a school or youth cen­tre and a cul­tur­al lunch with com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers.

Sturge al­so wants to pro­hib­it the Ja­maican artiste from per­form­ing his new song Good like Je­sus be­cause of the re­li­gious con­no­ta­tions.

But dur­ing a phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, An­der­son ex­plained that those plans were made for the orig­i­nal Feb­ru­ary 28 Car­ni­val show, which was resched­uled to May 31.

“I know my­self in every event I do in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, we al­ways take the en­ter­tain­ers and them in­to the YTC com­pound to talk to the youths and them about crime, so it is not some­thing new I’m do­ing,” An­der­son said, adding he had not spo­ken to Palmer since Sturge’s state­ment.

Kar­tel spent 13 years in prison for mur­der be­fore the Privy Coun­cil over­turned the con­vic­tion due to ju­ror mis­con­duct.

In a video post­ed to his so­cial me­dia, Palmer said, “The prob­lem lies with the pro­mot­er who took it up­on them­selves to try to fill Kar­tel’s itin­er­ary with things that have noth­ing to do with his per­for­mance.

“My job is to come and per­form for the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” the singer said.