Chester Sam­bra­no

There is now a pos­si­ble life­line for the thou­sands who de­pend and look for­ward to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s car­ni­val, as Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts Ran­dall Mitchell says he is weigh­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of stag­ing it lat­er than Feb­ru­ary of next year.

His com­ment came a day af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced that Car­ni­val 2021 is not on due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

This sent shock­waves through­out the coun­try, par­tic­u­lar­ly among key stake­hold­ers, some of whom called for the “Great­est show on earth” to be held vir­tu­al­ly.

One of the voic­es adding to that call was Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

How­ev­er, in a What­sApp ex­change with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Mitchell said all was not yet lost.

“So yes, with the aim of gen­er­at­ing eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty, con­sid­er­a­tion will be giv­en to hav­ing car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions lat­er in the year. This would al­so as­sist in re­viv­ing and re­vi­tal­is­ing the cre­ative sec­tor and all the sec­tors that sup­port this fes­ti­val and its events,” Mitchell said.

He ex­plained that the very na­ture of the Car­ni­val as we know it gen­er­ates a great amount of eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

“Vis­i­tor spend alone, ac­cord­ing to the CSO, is up­wards of $50 mil­lion US dol­lars,” he added.

Mitchell ex­plained that any de­ci­sion to host Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions lat­er in the year would be made “on­ly on the ad­vice and go-ahead from the Min­istry of Health and its of­fi­cials on the progress made and elim­i­na­tion of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.”

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, Mitchell al­so said his min­istry is work­ing to en­sure Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Car­ni­val re­mains “at the fore­front of the glob­al Car­ni­val land­scape.”

He agreed with the Prime Min­is­ter that it can­not be busi­ness as usu­al, not­ing that it is crit­i­cal the coun­try’s health and safe­ty are not jeop­ar­dised.

“Cur­rent­ly, we are en­gag­ing 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,” Mitchell ex­plained.

The cur­rent cal­en­dar dates had set aside Feb­ru­ary 15 and 16 for the cul­mi­na­tion of Car­ni­val 2021.

Now, the task of en­gag­ing stake­hold­ers to see what the op­tions are will be the task of the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC), the gov­ern­ing body which over­sees Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions.

On CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, NCC chair­man Win­ston “Gyp­sy” Pe­ters said he was not rul­ing out the idea of a vir­tu­al Car­ni­val but main­tained it must make eco­nom­i­cal sense.

“Car­ni­val is not just for us to show off our­selves. Car­ni­val is some­thing that is a mon­ey earn­er and a for­eign ex­change earn­er for Trinidad and To­ba­go. Car­ni­val is busi­ness, Car­ni­val is not just about jump and wine,” he said.

He said it can­not be a case where “it is just some­thing we are just go­ing to do to say that we are do­ing some­thing and we are just putting on a vir­tu­al car­ni­val.”

He said as a coun­try we have to un­der­stand why we are do­ing it, what we want to achieve by do­ing it and as long as we can come up with those an­swers, “def­i­nite­ly we are go­ing to do it.”