SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

De­spite the pres­ence of thou­sands of peo­ple - many with­out masks and not ap­pear­ing to ad­here to COVID-19 so­cial-dis­tanc­ing pro­to­cols - in the Grand Stand for a so­ca con­cert on Thurs­day night, po­lice have said they have re­ceived no re­ports that Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions were breached.

De­spite this, video and pho­tos of the show ‘Vibes with Voicey’ were sub­ject to strong con­dem­na­tion by many on so­cial me­dia yes­ter­day, with many pre­dict­ing a post-Car­ni­val spike in COVID-19 cas­es as a re­sult of the ac­tiv­i­ty.

The con­cert was head­lined by Aaron “Voice” St Louis and fea­tured per­for­mances by Na­dia Bat­son, Nailah Black­man, Mi­cal Te­ja, GBM Nu­tron, Farmer Nap­py, Lyrikal, KI and Ja­maican dance­hall artiste Kra­ni­um.

But in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Pub­lic In­for­ma­tion Of­fi­cer of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, Sheri­don Hill, said there were no re­ports of any breach­es of the Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions at the event.

Hill said he was in­formed of this by Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent of the Port of Spain Di­vi­sion-Bran­don John.

“He said there were no re­ports of that na­ture,” Hill said.

Hill could not say how many of­fi­cers would have been at the event.

Asked if po­lice could have shut down the event if there were breach­es of the reg­u­la­tions, Hill said that would most like­ly on­ly be done in a case where ex­treme mea­sures were need­ed to pre­serve life and safe­ty.

“It would have to be an ex­treme sit­u­a­tion, po­lice of­fi­cers can make judge­ment calls and to shut down an event would de­pend on the cir­cum­stances. It would al­so de­pend on the se­nior of­fi­cer who is present, I don’t think that is a de­ci­sion any of­fi­cer would take light­ly,” Hill said.

Guardian Me­dia spoke to St Louis’ man­ag­er, Lyn­don Gomez, who said there were ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2,200 at­ten­dees - with half be­ing ac­com­mo­dat­ed in the Grand Stand and the oth­er half in the Car­ni­val pods at the venue.

Gomez ad­mit­ted there were some is­sues through­out the night with man­ag­ing the crowd.

Patrons in the Grand Stand, Queen's Park Savannah, at Voice in concert on Thursday night.

“We tried our best, we made an­nounce­ments through­out the night, en­cour­aged so­cial dis­tanc­ing and mask-wear­ing and that kind of thing. It’s pos­si­ble that some peo­ple did not ad­here to it but we did our best to en­cour­age it through­out the night,” Gomez said.

He said from the be­gin­ning of the event at 8 pm, or­gan­is­ers tried re­mind­ing the crowd to ad­here to the reg­u­la­tions.

And al­though he la­belled the event a suc­cess, Gomez said there was room for im­prove­ment.

“There are al­ways op­por­tu­ni­ties to im­prove in every­thing that you do. It’s the first time that any­one did an event like this in the North Park area and there were some chal­lenges in terms of man­ag­ing it from the NCC (Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion) stand­point, but I think the ini­tia­tive was good, I think it’s good they are try­ing to pro­vide some sort of em­ploy­ment to peo­ple in the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try,” Gomez said.

NCC chair­man Win­ston “Gyp­sy” Pe­ters said he too had not re­ceived any re­ports of breach­es of the Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions at the event.

How­ev­er, Pe­ters said nei­ther the NCC, nor the TTPS could “po­lice” every at­tendee.

“I don’t think that was hap­pen­ing on a large scale, there may have been peo­ple who were not wear­ing their masks but I don’t think it was wide­spread enough to say that peo­ple weren’t ad­her­ing to what they are sup­posed to do. I see peo­ple walk­ing down the street right now with­out a mask, any­where you go, you will see al­ways a few peo­ple who will flaunt the laws,” Pe­ters said.

He said the NCC has staff who were present dur­ing the event to fa­cil­i­tate it.

“We have a lot of staff on the ground, we have guards try­ing to make sure (that peo­ple ad­here) but no mat­ter what you do, some peo­ple will al­ways try to flout the law, what­ev­er law it is.”

He said there were sev­er­al events planned for the week­end and the NCC will try to en­sure that at­ten­dees ad­here to the reg­u­la­tions.

Guardian Me­dia tried reach­ing out to Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh for a com­ment but he did not an­swer calls to his cell­phone. Ques­tions for the Min­is­ter were sent to the min­istry’s cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er, Can­dace Al­can­tara.

Al­can­tara re­spond­ed a short while lat­er, say­ing, “Good day. The mat­ter would be best ad­dressed by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice.”

She did not re­spond to fur­ther re­quests for com­ment.

Patrons in the Grand Stand, Queen’s Park Savannah, at Vibes with Voicey in concert on Thursday

So­cial Me­dia re­acts

Hun­dreds of so­cial me­dia users weighed in on the event yes­ter­day, with many con­demn­ing the at­ten­dees for not ad­her­ing to the Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tion.

One user wrote: “Af­ter Car­ni­val this coun­try go­ing to have so much peo­ple with COVID, look at the crowd no so­cial dis­tance and every­body who is avoid­ing crowd­ed places every one have to pay the price for the one who went to dance and wave no­body is afraid to COVID now come next Ash Wednes­day dif­fer­ent song will sing.”

An­oth­er wrote: “Y’all should of known that from the time Row­ley say no street pa­rade on­ly pods for car­ni­val Tri­nis get­ting a taste of car­ni­val they will take it any­how, come Mon­day/Tues­day dem pods is bro­ken wood, yuh cyah con­trol every­body en­joy the taste for me, none VAXXD don’t hate.”

Oth­ers com­plained about the con­trast be­tween mask-wear­ing at the event and mask-wear­ing in their pri­vate ve­hi­cles.

“Fete with­out masks is ok but have ur fam­i­ly in ur ve­hi­cle with­out masks is tick­ets sad place yes!!!”

Some pre­dict­ed an in­crease in COVID-19 cas­es post-Car­ni­val.

“Taste of car­ni­val more like a taste of COVID from Ash Wednes­day.”

“ NO MASK! NO SO­CIAL DIS­TANC­ING! NO RE­GARDS MASS GATH­ER­ING. WHEN COVID HITS THEM THEY PAR­TY DONE. HAVE SOME COM­MON SENSE PPL. THE MORE THE RATE GOES UP THE MORE MON­EY THEY’LL POCK­ET US­ING THE FOOL­ISH CIT­I­ZENS. THIS IS WHY COVID WON’T LEAVE.”

How­ev­er, many oth­ers com­mend­ed Voice and his team for the event.

“Voice did well! Con­grats to him. Peo­ple earned a lit­tle in­come and Tri­nis got a taste of Car­ni­val. Show was great. Pods worked very well!” one user wrote.

An­oth­er said, “The world is mov­ing on and go­ing for­ward, but from most of the com­ments I see about these events is that a lot of you want to stay in the imag­i­nary bub­ble of safe­ty, stay in your bub­ble but don’t wish bad on those that want to get back to a feel­ing of nor­mal­cy and en­joy life, if you don’t have any­thing good to say then say noth­ing.”

“Per­son­al­ly did not go or want to go but glad for all those who did and en­joyed them­selves. We have to live with COVID and per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is on all of us,” a third added.

Patrons at the Grand Stand, Queen’s Park Savannah, at Vibes with Voicey in concert on Thursday.

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