sto­ries by Lee An­na Ma­haraj

leean­na.ma­haraj@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts Ran­dall Mitchell has as­sured the pub­lic that crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty will not de­ter Car­ni­val 2023 cel­e­bra­tions.

Speak­ing at Tourism Trinidad Lim­it­ed’s Tourism Ac­com­mo­da­tion Up­grade Project at the Brix Ho­tel in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, he said the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice usu­al­ly does a good job around the sea­son.

“Car­ni­val sea­son is ex­treme­ly safe gen­er­al­ly. The Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and the po­lice ser­vice are one of the ma­jor stake­hold­ers in the plan­ning of Car­ni­val, so I am not too con­cerned with re­spect to that (crime for Car­ni­val), be­cause they are in the process of plan­ning. I have to com­mend the po­lice ser­vice, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son, all the pro­tec­tive ser­vices, they gen­er­al­ly en­sure that there is a very safe car­ni­val sea­son,” Mitchell said.

He al­so promised a stake­hold­er-wide meet­ing to dis­cuss Car­ni­val 2023 with­in the next three weeks. The meet­ing, which was ini­tial­ly card­ed for Tues­day, was sud­den­ly can­celled. Mitchell said he did not have the de­tails of why the meet­ing was can­celled but said it would be resched­uled.

With the cruise ship sea­son al­so ahead, Mitchell said T&T can ex­pect a fruit­ful one as two cruise ships are ex­pect­ed to bring thou­sands of pas­sen­gers to our shores.

Roy­al Caribbean’s Rhap­sody of the Seas will re­turn on No­vem­ber 21, for the first time in 20 years, and the MSC Cruise line will re­turn on No­vem­ber 30th. About 4,000 pas­sen­gers are pre­dict­ed to be on the MSC Cruis­es and around 3,000 on the Rhap­sody of the Seas.

“We look for­ward to wel­com­ing the cruise lines. We have a very de­cent cruise sea­son com­ing out of COVID,” Mitchell said.

“We ex­pect to take on board the Min­istry of Health. They have in­di­cat­ed that they are in­ter­est­ed in look­ing at the new ways in which the cruise ships deal with ill­ness on board com­ing out of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, the new rules, the new struc­tures, et cetera, so we ex­pect to take the Min­is­ter of Health and his team on board to look at what goes on and to take a lit­tle tour of the cruise ship as well. We look for­ward to the cruis­ers com­ing on board and spend­ing their mon­ey in­to our econ­o­my and ex­pe­ri­enc­ing what we have to of­fer here in Trinidad,” he added.

Mitchell al­so said the min­istry is pleased with the warm re­cep­tion the coun­try has been re­ceiv­ing thanks to fa­mous food vlog­ger Mark Wiens.

Weins, who vis­it­ed Trinidad ear­li­er in Sep­tem­ber, part­nered with the min­istry’s “Vis­it Trinidad” for sev­er­al food tours around the coun­try. Since then, Wiens has up­loaded six videos from his time here, gain­ing mil­lions of views and com­ments. Many non-na­tion­als ex­pressed their love and ap­pre­ci­a­tion for Trin­bag­on­ian food and cul­ture, stat­ing their wish to vis­it soon.

“Trinidad and To­ba­go is one of the most beau­ti­ful is­lands, and we are ex­treme­ly proud and con­fi­dent that we are. Some­times it takes a for­eign­er, some­body who is in­ter­na­tion­al, some­body who has vis­it­ed quite a num­ber of dif­fer­ent des­ti­na­tions, to come and to tell us, ‘your is­land is ex­treme­ly beau­ti­ful’. We are ex­treme­ly proud, we are ex­treme­ly hap­py to con­tin­ue mar­ket­ing the des­ti­na­tion, and mar­ket­ing the com­mu­ni­ty tourism prod­ucts, and all the com­mu­ni­ties with­in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Mitchell said of the re­ports Wiens did.