Renu­ka Singh

Cab­i­net has ap­proved $15 mil­lion for 2022’s Taste of Car­ni­val and has set aside a fur­ther $5 mil­lion to be used as spon­sor­ship sup­port for oth­er safe zone events.

The an­nounce­ment was made yes­ter­day, one day af­ter Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell called an im­promp­tu press con­fer­ence to clar­i­fy ear­li­er claims by Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mit­tee (NCC) chair Win­ston Pe­ters that the bud­get stood be­tween $25 to $30 mil­lion.

In a me­dia re­lease, the Min­istry of Tourism ap­plaud­ed the al­lo­ca­tion, say­ing that the fund­ing will come from the Min­istry of Fi­nance as well as from spon­sors who they hope will as­sist in off­set­ting some ex­pen­di­ture re­lat­ed to the pay­ment of artistes and per­for­mance fees to the cre­atives in­volved “through the Min­istry’s ap­proved ap­pli­ca­tion process.”

The $15 mil­lion will go to­ward the ef­forts of the three spe­cial in­ter­est groups, Pan Trin­ba­go, the Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO), and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Car­ni­val Bands As­so­ci­a­tion.

The $5 mil­lion will go to­wards “a num­ber of small­er, sep­a­rate­ly pro­mot­ed safe zone type of events.”

“Fund­ing for a “Taste of Car­ni­val” will be sourced from the Min­istry of Fi­nance, as well as from usu­al rev­enue streams re­lat­ed to spon­sor­ship as well as gate re­ceipts re­ceived by the NCC and the sep­a­rate event pro­mo­tions,” the Min­istry said.

Mitchell said that the peo­ple in­volved in the cul­tur­al and cre­ative sec­tors have been some of the hard­est hit dur­ing this con­tin­u­ing pan­dem­ic.

TASTE OF CARNIVAL LOGO

“The bulk of this bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion will be go­ing to those who have been most im­pact­ed by the pan­dem­ic: the artistes, the per­form­ers, the pan men, the ar­ti­sans, and those to be em­ployed in ush­er­ing, se­cu­ri­ty, and oth­er ar­eas in an in­dus­try that is labour in­ten­sive. With­out the pan men, per­form­ers, cre­ators of mas, pro­mot­ers and sup­port staff, our Car­ni­val could not be as suc­cess­ful and world-renowned as it is,” Mitchell said in the re­lease.

Mitchell not­ed that since the an­nounce­ment of a Taste of Car­ni­val, there has been an in­crease in vac­ci­na­tions, “as the cre­atives and those oth­er­wise in­volved in the Car­ni­val process are ea­ger to par­tic­i­pate and prac­tice their craft.”

“We are com­mit­ted to con­tin­ue sup­port­ing artistes, per­form­ers, and all cre­atives who make the in­dus­try what it is to­day,” he said.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Pe­ters, ask­ing if this was enough of a bud­get to ex­e­cute the plans he had for­ward­ed to the Min­istry, but there was no re­sponse.

Among the things be­ing in­tro­duced by the NCC to en­sure safe dis­tanc­ing at events, are pods at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah to hold be­tween six and nine peo­ple each.

The pods will re­place the North Stand and the lanes be­tween them will be named af­ter Car­ni­val leg­ends. Pods will al­so be cre­at­ed in the Grand Stand.

The gov­ern­ment had come un­der fire af­ter the ini­tial spend­ing fig­ure of $25 to $30 mil­lion was an­nounced, with many, in­clud­ing the Op­po­si­tion say­ing it was too much for a scaled-down Car­ni­val.

Min­is­ter Mitchell told a news con­fer­ence on Wednes­day that the sum an­nounced by the NCC chair­man was not yet fi­nalised and had promised to dis­close the fi­nal fig­ure with­in 48 hours.