Chair­man of the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) Win­ston “Gyp­sy” Pe­ters yes­ter­day said he be­lieves the Pic­cadil­ly Greens judg­ing point should be manda­to­ry for bands want­i­ng to par­tic­i­pate in band of the year.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the Greens on Tues­day, by 11 am on­ly two bands had crossed the stage. The first band to pass was Lost Tribe around 9.25 am. With the pre­sen­ta­tion Fly. At 10.59 am the sec­ond band to pass was Show­time pre­sent­ing Tribes of the World.

Speak­ing as he viewed the pro­ceed­ings at South Quay, Pe­ters said: “I think so be­cause Pic­cadil­ly is where Car­ni­val start­ed it is manda­to­ry any­way. That is where Car­ni­val start­ed, and we must nev­er for­get that.”

Port-of-Spain May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne, who was al­so there, said the Port-of-Spain City Coun­cil is work­ing on plans to bring more bands to down­town Car­ni­val as well as east Port-of-Spain. He added that the strate­gies used to in­crease the bands down­town this year will be du­pli­cat­ed for Pic­cadil­ly Greens. When asked what those plans were, he said, “a ma­gi­cian nev­er re­veals his se­crets.”

“It’s go­ing to take us some time to con­tin­ue the mo­tion of de­vel­op­ment. We’ve seen some sig­nif­i­cant suc­cess here at South Quay. Once we tight­en up on what it is we’ve been able to achieve here, we will take the mod­el that we de­vel­oped and car­ry it to Pic­cadil­ly as well.”

Coun­cil­lor for St Ann’s Riv­er South, Jen­neil Fred­er­ick said for the first time, there was live en­ter­tain­ment at Down­town Car­ni­val, some­thing she hopes will con­tin­ue.

On Car­ni­val Mon­day spec­ta­tors were treat­ed to live pan per­for­mances as bands took their lunch break, she said. Yes­ter­day there were live per­for­mances from Iw­er George, All Rounder, Robert Dean and oth­ers. She added that bands were en­cour­aged to pass at every judg­ing point.

Pe­ters said one of the judg­ing points was re­moved due to a lack of wa­ter. When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed Adam Smith Square, NCC of­fi­cials said that there was no judg­ing as a de­ci­sion was tak­en on Mon­day night. The of­fi­cial Car­ni­val route did not list Adam Smith Square as a judg­ing point, how­ev­er, it was used on Car­ni­val Mon­day.

Mean­while, dur­ing CNC’s live cov­er­age of the So­cadrome, Pe­ters said the time has come to change the nar­ra­tive that Car­ni­val is of the dev­il and teach it prop­er­ly in schools.

“We have to do more work in the schools. We have to stop bad talk­ing Car­ni­val, and Car­ni­val is dev­il thing all that kind of non­sense. We have to teach peo­ple, es­pe­cial­ly, our young chil­dren, that Car­ni­val is im­por­tant to Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

He added that while Car­ni­val has al­ready been ex­port­ed to many coun­tries, more can be done.

“Let’s teach our chil­dren, have more mas­quer­ades for the chil­dren. En­cour­age them to get in­volved in the pro­duc­tion of mas, the pro­duc­tion of steel pan and get in­cul­cat­ed in the whole Car­ni­val at­mos­phere. Trinidad and To­ba­go is Car­ni­val coun­try.”