Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try, Paula Gopee-Scoon, yes­ter­day launched a $1.95 mil­lion Steel­pan Tuner Ap­pren­tice­ship Pro­gramme.

The min­istry has part­nered with MIC In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy for the pro­gramme which is aimed at en­hanc­ing the qual­i­ty of steel­pan prod­ucts that are made in T&T and ex­port­ed to dif­fer­ent mar­kets around the world.

In an­nounc­ing the launch of the pro­gramme, Gopee-Scoon al­so said that the Gov­ern­ment has spent $27 mil­lion over the last three years on ap­pren­tice­ship pro­grammes.

Gopee-Scoon said, “It is a fact that there has been a de­cline in the num­ber of skill steel­pan tuners with many of the great mas­ters of the craft ei­ther re­tir­ing or no longer with us. This pro­gramme has been de­signed to en­sure the next gen­er­a­tion of tuners is trained in the au­then­tic and metic­u­lous meth­ods of this vi­tal craft and car­ry for­ward the knowl­edge, the tra­di­tions, and the skills nec­es­sary to sus­tain the in­dus­try.”

She fur­ther em­pha­sised that the pro­gramme is not just about teach­ing a trade but nur­tur­ing an art form that is cen­tral to T&T’s cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty and has eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties.

The sen­a­tor added, “This pro­gramme will cre­ate jobs, help sus­tain lo­cal pan yards and ex­pand the larg­er steel­pan ecosys­tem.”

She added that while the steel­pan is part of T&T’s cul­tur­al her­itage, it is of­ten over­looked for its eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties.

The idea was put for­ward by Steel­pan Steer­ing Com­mit­tee which was formed in 2023.

Among oth­er ini­tia­tives pro­posed by the com­mit­tee in­clude the cre­ation of a mech­a­nism to con­nect tuners, play­ers, arrangers, com­posers and man­u­fac­tur­ers to col­lab­o­rate and work to­geth­er to build the in­dus­try, a com­pre­hen­sive cap analy­sis of the in­dus­try to tai­lor train­ing and ca­pac­i­ty build­ing en­deav­ours for both the pan fra­ter­ni­ty and the gen­er­al pub­lic and a record­ing fund for steel­bands so their per­for­mances can be record­ed and mar­ket­ed in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

A thor­ough re­view of tax ben­e­fits to tar­get pro­posed in­cen­tives to en­cour­age sup­port of the in­dus­try has al­so been pro­posed as well as the de­vel­op­ment of a web­site to al­low all stake­hold­ers along the val­ue chain to of­fer their prod­ucts to both lo­cal and for­eign con­sumers.

Gopee-Scoon says the Steel­pan Man­u­fac­tur­ing Grant Fund Fa­cil­i­ty, es­tab­lished in 2020, has seen ex­ports of the na­tion­al in­stru­ment in­crease by 72 per cent from $1.9 mil­lion in 2020 to over $3.1 mil­lion in 2023. Lo­cal con­sump­tion has al­so in­creased, ac­cord­ing to the trade min­is­ter. Nine com­pa­nies have so far ben­e­fit­ed from the grants in the form of $3 mil­lion.