Soyi­ni Grey

Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Pro­mot­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion Jerome Pre­cil­la says fete pro­mot­ers feel they are be­ing left out of the main Car­ni­val dis­cus­sions by the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion and the Gov­ern­ment, de­spite be­ing ma­jor con­trib­u­tors to the sea­son­al ex­pe­ri­ence for vis­i­tors.

This, he says, leaves them strug­gling to deal with some of the ma­jor chal­lenges they face dur­ing the sea­son, one of which is the bu­reau­cra­cy of get­ting things re­lat­ed to the in­dus­try done in this coun­try.

“The biggest thing for us is the bu­reau­cra­cy of putting on a fete. Be­yond any­thing else. Be­yond the fund­ing ..., it is very, very dif­fi­cult to put on a fete in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Pre­cil­la told Guardian me­dia yes­ter­day in re­sponse to ques­tions about some of the chal­lenges fac­ing his mem­ber­ship as they get ready for the “Moth­er of All Car­ni­vals.”

He said the com­plex­i­ty of hav­ing to se­cure a Noise Vari­a­tion from the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty, per­mis­sions from the Po­lice and Fire Ser­vice and se­cur­ing a bar li­cense to have a con­cert or event were time con­sum­ing bar­ri­ers hurt­ing their in­dus­try and, by ex­ten­sion, the Car­ni­val econ­o­my.

De­spite these is­sues, he ar­gued that his sec­tor was re­spon­si­ble for the draw­ing the largest crowds both lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al to our shores for the sea­son, which in turn ben­e­fits the coun­try in vis­i­tor num­bers and for­eign ex­change.

But that is not the as­so­ci­a­tions on­ly gripe.

“You dub­bing it as a ‘Moth­er of all Car­ni­vals’, yet still you have not sat with the pro­mot­ers’ as­so­ci­a­tion to say, ‘What are you all’s plans for Car­ni­val 2023? How can we get in­volved? How can we sup­port this?’” he asked rhetor­i­cal­ly.

“Be­cause if you look at the space, and you look at the at­ten­dance at the events, it’s the pro­mot­ers’ as­so­ci­a­tion mem­ber­ship that re­al­ly draws the crowd and puts on the Moth­er of all Car­ni­vals.”

Pre­cil­la wants to see a more or­gan­ised re­sponse to their work, in­clud­ing a stream­lin­ing of the var­i­ous ap­pli­ca­tions re­quired for an event to be ap­proved.

This ar­gu­ment finds favour with Randy Glas­gow, of Randy Glas­gow Pro­duc­tions Ltd, who be­lieves a struc­tured ap­proach is need­ed.

“You need an ad­min­is­tra­tive board over­see­ing Car­ni­val that will con­sist of the cus­toms, the po­lice, the fire, all the au­thor­i­ties must be in tune with what’s hap­pen­ing,” Glas­gow, a cur­rent mem­ber and for­mer pres­i­dent of the as­so­ci­a­tion, said.

Glas­gow said such a board could pos­si­bly be a spe­cialised arm of the Min­istry of Fi­nance giv­en, among its roles, the is­su­ing of fete li­cens­es, in­clud­ing the var­i­ous copy­right li­cens­es need­ed for per­mis­sion to play the live and/or record­ed mu­sic at events.

He said the pro­posed board could al­so help the var­i­ous stake­hold­ers come up with poli­cies that can work in har­mo­ny with the cre­ation of a great tourism prod­uct, some­thing Glas­gow cau­tions does not cur­rent­ly hap­pen.

“If I could make ref­er­ence to a Car­ni­val Mon­day or Tues­day, the Li­cens­ing Au­thor­i­ty would move around with their tape in­spect­ing tyres,” he said.

“And we feel that is not the place to be check­ing these things be­cause you have 300 or 400 mas­quer­aders from abroad in a band...and be­cause the li­cens­ing peo­ple are do­ing their checks...these trucks have to stay still in the hot sun for an hour, two hours while they do their checks.”

For Pre­cil­la, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter com­ing out of the pan­dem­ic and its re­stric­tions, the cur­rent sta­tus quo can­not stand. He said the as­so­ci­a­tion will, in the com­ing days, make pub­lic some sug­ges­tions they be­lieve will put the Car­ni­val in a pos­i­tive di­rec­tion.

“We will have our own press con­fer­ence to let the Gov­ern­ment know that we not re­al­ly hap­py with how things un­fold year af­ter year with Car­ni­val. Es­pe­cial­ly com­ing out of the pan­dem­ic, we ex­pect­ed to see a lot more done for the in­dus­try and we haven’t re­al­ly seen that, ver­sus mon­ey just be­ing pumped in­to the NCC for them to do what they want with it and we haven’t had a meet­ing with them, or with any of the oth­er stake­hold­ers, as to what is go­ing to hap­pen for the Car­ni­val. No­body has con­sult­ed with us on that,” Pre­cil­la said.

There is al­so the emerg­ing is­sue of event spaces.

“We are hav­ing a lot of is­sues with the use of cer­tain venues to get these things done,” he said.

While he failed to go in­to de­tails, Glas­gow told Guardian Me­dia he has had some is­sues with stag­ing his events at the Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um.