KEVON FELMINE
Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

The San Fer­nan­do Car­ni­val Com­mit­tee is promis­ing a fes­tive Car­ni­val in the south­ern city this year and has part­nered with Cav­al­ho Cruise Ser­vices Ltd to bring cruise ship pas­sen­gers to ex­pe­ri­ence San Fer­nan­do.

At a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, San Fer­nan­do May­or Robert Par­ris said the Wa­ter Taxi Ser­vice will trans­port the tourists from Port-of-Spain to San Fer­nan­do.

Dur­ing City Month cel­e­bra­tions in No­vem­ber, San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion (SFCC) of­fi­cials held talks with the Min­istry of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts. They met with Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and Arts Ran­dall Mitchell last week.

“You can un­der­stand why we are de­vel­op­ing the prod­uct around the wa­ter­front. It is not some­thing that we are mak­ing up as we go along. There is a plan based on the great his­to­ry I have learned from the book Ayede­ma. The San Fer­nan­do wharf played an in­te­gral part in the Car­ni­vals of the past, and we in­tend to re­turn to our past,” Par­ris said.

Con­venor of Car­ni­val Dawad Philip said the SFCC is cur­rent­ly ne­go­ti­at­ing with a team to pro­vide tour guides and sites and events have al­ready been cho­sen, in­clud­ing a pic­nic on San Fer­nan­do Hill and an arts and crafts mar­ket at the port with tra­di­tion­al mas, en­ter­tain­ment and food.

“We want them to taste the roti be­cause we know we have the best roti in the world. We have the best roti in Trinidad. We have the best roti in the world and the best dou­bles. It is a culi­nary, cre­ative and holis­tic ex­pe­ri­ence. I think every­body will be pleased at the end of the day,” Philip said.

He not­ed that tourism brings rev­enue to the city, not on­ly from in­ter­na­tion­al vis­i­tors but lo­cals as well and with sev­er­al ho­tels and bread and break­fast ac­com­mo­da­tions avail­able, they could spend week­ends in San Fer­nan­do to at­tend the var­i­ous Car­ni­val events.

Philip added that fund­ing for Car­ni­val has been an is­sue for pre­vi­ous com­mit­tees, so his team has put to­geth­er an aus­tere bud­get of $1.3 mil­lion. He ad­mit­ted that this might be in­suf­fi­cient and the mis­sion was to get the busi­ness com­mit­tee to in­vest in San Fer­nan­do Car­ni­val.

He said the com­mit­tee needs help to source bleach­ers and funds to en­hance prizes for the var­i­ous com­pe­ti­tions. 

“We know it is not much, but when we com­pare it to the rest of the car­ni­vals- To­ba­go, Port-of-Spain and up the is­lands—all we are say­ing is that we have an au­then­tic prod­uct in San Fer­nan­do that match­es or sur­pass­es any of the car­ni­vals any­where in the West­ern Hemi­sphere. Our tra­di­tions of In­di­an mas, our tra­di­tions of the tra­di­tion­al cos­tum­ing, those kinds of things.”

Par­ris said the SFCC is cre­at­ing an en­vi­ron­ment for in­vest­ment so the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty could see the city as a vi­able place to spend their mon­ey, es­pe­cial­ly with the San Fer­nan­do Wa­ter­front De­vel­op­ment com­ing on stream. He said Car­ni­val is just one as­pect of the tourism prod­uct and there are de­vel­op­men­tal plans for busi­ness tourism.

Pan Trin­ba­go South Re­gion­al Ex­ec­u­tive Chair­man Phillip Bark­er an­nounced the re­turn of the Pan Champs com­pe­ti­tion to San Fer­nan­do on Feb­ru­ary 8 at Skin­ner Park. It will be a trib­ute to the late Ken “Pro­fes­sor” Philmore. The com­pe­ti­tion last took place in 2006.

Pan Trin­ba­go has ob­tained ap­proval from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) to close the streets sur­round­ing Skin­ner Park to ac­com­mo­date the Panora­ma Small Con­ven­tion­al Fi­nals where 15 bands will be vy­ing for the ti­tle on Fri­day from 7 pm.

As a re­sult, there will be no unau­tho­rised traf­fic en­trance to Den­nis “Spran­galang” Hall Street, Park Street  (from AS­JA Boys to Cipero Street), Cipero Street from Park Street to Rien­zi Kir­ton High­way, from 5 pm Fri­day to 3 am Sat­ur­day.