Carisa Christie Su­san Lee

Re­porter

Carisa.Lee@cnc3.co.tt

Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) chair­man Win­ston “Gyp­sy” Pe­ters does not be­lieve the State of Emer­gency (SoE) de­clared by the Gov­ern­ment yes­ter­day will im­pact next year’s Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions. In fact, he is en­cour­ag­ing tourists and vis­i­tors who planned on at­tend­ing to come still and ex­pe­ri­ence the “great­est show on earth.” But not all Car­ni­val stake­hold­ers share his view.

“To the peo­ple who are not Trinida­di­ans and who are not in Trinidad and around, please feel free to come to Trinidad be­cause those things are not di­rect­ed to you and you are go­ing to have a won­der­ful time,” Pe­ters stat­ed.

Pe­ters told po­ten­tial vis­i­tors that the SoE was de­clared to tar­get cer­tain in­di­vid­u­als.

“You are safe in this coun­try, this is a safe coun­try,” he said.

He said act­ing At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Stu­art Young, dur­ing the me­dia con­fer­ence where the an­nounce­ment was made, stat­ed that Car­ni­val was con­sid­ered when dis­cus­sions about the SoE start­ed. Pe­ters said the con­di­tions so far do not af­fect the move­ment of peo­ple in and out or around the coun­try.

How­ev­er, mas band­leader of Ron­nie and Caro, Ron­nie McIn­tosh, be­lieves this news can im­pact their sales even though the SoE does not re­strict cit­i­zens. He said af­ter Christ­mas, they usu­al­ly get an in­flux of cus­tomers, but this news would de­ter some.

“If I, as a for­eign­er now about to go on­line to reg­is­ter or now about to go and book my air­line tick­et and be­fore I go on­line and I see a State of Emer­gency in Trinidad...I might even change my mind and say lemme go Bar­ba­dos for the va­ca­tion in­stead, let me go Ja­maica,” he said.

McIn­tosh al­so ques­tioned the tim­ing of the SoE.

“We wait un­til all the Christ­mas shop­ping is over so all the cur­tains sell, and all the pan­els sell. Price Smart make their bil­lions, Massy made their bil­lions and okay now it’s time for the reg­u­lar cit­i­zens to de­pend on a lil Car­ni­val sit­u­a­tion it’s fine but we wait un­til the Christ­mas shop­ping is over,” he said.

Pro­mot­er Randy Glas­gow said while they be­lieved an SoE was need­ed be­cause the wel­fare and safe­ty of cit­i­zens came first, it was high­ly pos­si­ble that the date for his ma­jor con­cert may have to shift or be can­celled. He said the women who usu­al­ly sup­port his event have re­spon­si­bil­i­ties in tak­ing care of their chil­dren and house­holds, and would hard­ly want to ven­ture out to events dur­ing a SoE.

“Dur­ing a pre­vi­ous SoE we did com­e­dy shows to re­lieve cit­i­zens’ stress and it was poor­ly at­tend­ed de­spite ad­mis­sion fees were $50,” he said.

Mean­while, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Pro­mot­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTPA) said they re­mained com­mit­ted to ful­fill­ing and do­ing all they could to en­sure the safe­ty of our fel­low cit­i­zens.

“The Trinidad and To­ba­go Pro­mot­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion and its mem­bers con­tin­ue to in­vest heav­i­ly in the per­son­al safe­ty of its pa­trons, staff, and all stake­hold­ers when pro­duc­ing events,” the TTPA said.

The TTPA said it was look­ing for­ward to their next meet­ing with stake­hold­ers in se­cu­ri­ty like the po­lice and the Fire Ser­vice to en­sure align­ment with that ob­jec­tive.

In a state­ment, Cre­ative Di­rec­tor of Tribe, Valmi­ki Ma­haraj, said the Gov­ern­ment’s re­cent­ly an­nounced SoE was nec­es­sary as Car­ni­val 2025 neared. Ma­haraj added that man­age­ment would co­op­er­ate ful­ly with the au­thor­i­ties as they work to­wards en­sur­ing a safe and se­cure en­vi­ron­ment for mem­bers of the pub­lic. He de­scribed Car­ni­val as a tra­di­tion­al pe­ri­od of na­tion­al pride, cel­e­bra­tion, and tremen­dous eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties for many in the en­ter­tain­ment, hos­pi­tal­i­ty, and tourism sec­tors.