The Gov­ern­ment has met with the Unit­ed States’ Em­bassy in Port-of-Spain, seek­ing to en­hance the ef­forts of cul­tur­al work­ers who need visas to trav­el to the Unit­ed States for rev­enue-earn­ing per­for­mances af­ter be­ing neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed by COVID-19 re­stric­tions here.

This fol­lows a meet­ing in­volv­ing Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts Ran­dall Mitchell and Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Dr Amery Browne, Chargé d’Af­faires of the Unit­ed States Em­bassy in Trinidad and To­ba­go Shante Moore and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Pro­mot­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion on Wednes­day.

A state­ment by the Min­istry of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts said yes­ter­day that it con­tin­ues to ad­vo­cate on be­half of artistes and pro­mot­ers to smoothen the process of ap­pli­ca­tion for work visas and ad­dress any chal­lenges re­lat­ed to their abil­i­ty to trav­el abroad for work re­lat­ed to the pro­mo­tion of T&T’s cul­ture in the Unit­ed States.

As it cur­rent­ly stands, cul­tur­al work­ers who rep­re­sent Trinidad and To­ba­go at var­i­ous events and fes­ti­vals must ap­ply for a spe­cial visa that gives them the abil­i­ty to law­ful­ly work tem­porar­i­ly with­in the Unit­ed States.

One of the main chal­lenges faced by the cul­tur­al sec­tor is the clo­sure of the Unit­ed States Em­bassy in Trinidad and To­ba­go due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, which ef­fec­tive­ly ceased in-per­son in­ter­views at the em­bassy.

The state­ment said, “Moore un­der­scored his gov­ern­ment’s sup­port for Trinidad and To­ba­go’s cul­tur­al sec­tor and gave the un­der­tak­ing that is­sues raised by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Pro­mot­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion through the Min­istry of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts will be re­viewed by the Con­sular Sec­tion of the Unit­ed States Em­bassy.”

The state­ment al­so quot­ed Mitchell as say­ing, “This meet­ing was ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary as the min­istry seeks to ame­lio­rate any bar­ri­ers to earn­ing in­come abroad, as the sec­tor seeks to re­cov­er from the im­pact of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. Both the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment and the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs are key stake­hold­ers in this process and all par­ties are on board with en­sur­ing that the cre­ative sec­tor re­turns to some sense of nor­mal­cy.”

The min­istry’s state­ment added that the meet­ing fol­lows on the heels of a re­cent­ly im­ple­ment­ed pro­gramme that fa­cil­i­tates the ease of vac­ci­na­tions and re­turn trav­el ex­emp­tions for cul­tur­al work­ers, to as­sist mem­bers of the sec­tor in ac­cept­ing book­ings and en­gage­ments in­ter­na­tion­al­ly at fes­ti­vals and events.

“Min­is­ters Mitchell and Browne and the Chargé d’Af­faires joint­ly ex­pressed their com­mit­ment to the cul­tur­al sec­tor and pledged to con­tin­ue work­ing to­geth­er to en­sure the sec­tor’s sur­vival,” the state­ment said.