The Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts says he and the Min­istry are work­ing to en­sure Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Car­ni­val re­mains “at the fore­front of the glob­al Car­ni­val land­scape”.

On Mon­day 28 Sep­tem­ber 2020, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced that Trinidad and To­ba­go will not host Car­ni­val 2021 be­cause of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell agreed that it can­not be busi­ness as usu­al, not­ing that it is crit­i­cal the coun­try’s health and safe­ty is not jeop­ar­dized.

““We will con­tin­ue to pri­or­i­tize the na­tion’s health over short-term eco­nom­ic gains. But we al­so rec­og­nize what Car­ni­val means to Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he points out. “Cur­rent­ly, we are en­gag­ing en­gage stake­hold­ers to ex­plore how Trinidad and To­ba­go can re­tain its time and space on the in­ter­na­tion­al Car­ni­val cal­en­dar, to so­lid­i­fy this coun­try’s po­si­tion as the home of Car­ni­val,” Min­is­ter Mitchell ex­plains.

Min­is­ter Mitchell re­ports that over the past few weeks, the Min­istry has been in dis­cus­sions with key Car­ni­val stake­hold­ers and the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC). Dur­ing these meet­ings, it was clear there is a need for Trinidad and To­ba­go to re­tain its place on the in­ter­na­tion­al Car­ni­val cal­en­dar, he notes, to en­sure fu­ture eco­nom­ic and so­cial ben­e­fits and to so­lid­i­fy our po­si­tion as the home of Car­ni­val. 

“Trinidad and To­ba­go must take the lead and pro­vide the world with a bench­mark to fol­low for how such a fes­ti­val can still hold world­wide at­ten­tion. It is im­per­a­tive that what­ev­er is en­vis­aged takes in­to con­sid­er­a­tion our new nor­mal with­out flout­ing any of the health guide­lines in place,” he stat­ed.

The Min­is­ter as­sures that Min­istry is work­ing to en­sure Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Car­ni­val re­mains at the fore­front of the glob­al Car­ni­val land­scape, and will lay the foun­da­tion for an even big­ger and bet­ter Car­ni­val 2022.

In the state­ment, he al­so points to the fact that Trinidad and To­ba­go suc­cess­ful­ly host­ed the re­cent Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL 2020) Crick­et Tour­na­ment, which pro­vid­ed a blue­print for stag­ing large scale events dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

Min­is­ter Mitchell says the Min­istry and its stake­hold­ers will ap­ply the lessons learnt from that ex­pe­ri­ence to oth­er tourism and cul­tur­al events.