Soyi­ni Grey

Se­nior Pro­duc­er

soyi­ni.grey@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is hail­ing the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion’s Fla­va Vil­lage, launched Thurs­day, as a “bril­liant project”.

The ad­di­tion to the an­nu­al John Cu­pid Car­ni­val Vil­lage, which was it­self launched on Fri­day, arranged the food ven­dors based at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah in a spe­cial­ly cu­rat­ed space that will al­low vis­i­tors to pur­chase and con­sume a va­ri­ety of cui­sine in a clean and fes­tive en­vi­ron­ment.

The Prime Min­is­ter re­port­ed­ly came straight from her Cab­i­net meet­ing as sev­er­al Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters could be seen en­joy­ing the launch and tour­ing the set-up.

“I think this is a bril­liant project done by the Min­is­ter of Cul­ture. I’m very im­pressed that on a Thurs­day night, a week­day night, there’s so many peo­ple here,” Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

The project sat­is­fies two goals of Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion chair­man Pe­ter Kan­hai: cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties and show­case lo­cal food, which he said is “guid­ed by the be­lief that Trinidad and To­ba­go cui­sine is among the best in the world.”

“There are many ven­dors here, and we want every­one to not on­ly vis­it, but al­so to sup­port gen­er­ous­ly,” Kan­hai said.

Min­is­ter of Cul­ture and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Michelle Ben­jamin said the Fla­va Vil­lage can ac­com­mo­date up to 170 booths, and al­ready 70 were filled. She, how­ev­er, not­ed that it al­so ad­dressed con­cerns ven­dors had in the past when Car­ni­val in­stal­la­tions ei­ther pre­cip­i­tat­ed their re­moval or blocked easy ac­cess to their booths.

“Un­like past years when we had com­plaints from ven­dors, we had com­plaints about sales; this ex­pe­ri­ence guar­an­tees that ven­dors will see a prof­it,” she said.

Michael Williams, Pres­i­dent of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Lo­cal Culi­nary Am­bas­sadors, which rep­re­sents many of these ven­dors, agreed with Min­is­ter Ben­jamin, say­ing it ad­dressed that prob­lem by con­sol­i­dat­ing food booths in a space that al­so al­lowed for con­sump­tion and en­ter­tain­ment.

The Fla­va Vil­lage will open dai­ly from 4 pm to 1 am, and it will re­main open long af­ter Car­ni­val, clos­ing in April.