The Tas­sa As­so­ci­a­tion has bashed state agen­cies and the pri­vate sec­tor for what they say are their un­will­ing­ness to sup­port the Schools Tas­sa com­pe­ti­tion. Wen­dell Ever­s­ley, the vice pres­i­dent of the Tas­sa As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (TATT), com­plained bit­ter­ly that some of these bod­ies con­tin­ue to ne­glect tas­sa de­spite the fact that the in­stru­ment has im­pact­ed  the cul­ture of T&T. 

He was ad­dress­ing the first ever Schools Na­tion­al Tas­sara­ma Com­pe­ti­tion at the NCIC Na­gar, Ch­agua­nas on Wednes­day. 

Ever­s­ley said, “When I look at the pro­gramme, and when I look to see who the spon­sors are con­tribut­ing, I shake my head and tears al­most come out of my eyes to know that this coun­try is filthy rich and we treat our cul­ture with scorn. This morn­ing I want to make a plea to Her­itage (Pe­tro­le­um) Paria Fu­els, I want to make a plea to the Na­tion­al Lot­tery Board, I want to make a plea to bmo­bile, I want to make a plea to Dig­i­cel, be­cause at the end of the day mil­lions of dol­lars are be­ing pumped in­to these state en­ter­pris­es, how come you dis­re­spect­ing the cul­ture, how come you dis­re­spect­ing the Tas­sa and to­day I feel re­al­ly hurt.” Ever­s­ley said he wants the gov­ern­ment and co­po­rate T&T to do their part to en­sure that T&T’s cul­ture can grow." 

In the sec­ondary schools cat­e­go­ry, Na­pari­ma Col­lege emerged win­ners. Na­paria­ma was the first sec­ondary school band to par­tic­i­pate and gave an out­stand­ing per­for­mance that was dif­fi­cult for the rest of par­tic­i­pants to fol­low. Plac­ing sec­ond and third re­spec­tive­ly were Mara­bel­la North Sec­ondary and Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege Ch­agua­nas. 

The  Av­o­cat (APS) Vedic Pri­ma­ry School was the on­ly pri­ma­ry school band to par­tic­i­pate and emerged  as win­ner in this cat­e­go­ry.  Av­o­cat was judged as the Most Out­stand­ing Band 

Win­ners would share a to­tal purse of $50,000. Prizes are ex­pect­ed to be dis­trib­uted next month.