ELIZ­A­BETH GON­ZA­LES

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

With just days to go be­fore To­ba­go Car­ni­val, hun­dreds of mas­quer­aders are at risk of los­ing thou­sands of dol­lars in cos­tume de­posits be­cause they are un­able to se­cure flights to the is­land.

Mas band lead­ers say time is run­ning out as the sit­u­a­tion grows in­creas­ing­ly dire.

To­ba­go Car­ni­val Bands As­so­ci­a­tion (TO­CA) pres­i­dent Dex­ter Sandy said many mas­quer­aders are pan­ick­ing be­cause they have al­ready paid for cos­tumes but have no con­firmed trav­el arrange­ments.

“Mas­quer­aders are fear­ful of los­ing thou­sands in cos­tume de­posits,” Sandy said. “With one week to hit the road in To­ba­go, mas­quer­aders are fear­ful that de­posits made months in ad­vance are now at risk, as there is no con­firmed avail­abil­i­ty of seats to get to To­ba­go by air­lift.”

He said band­lead­ers have been in­un­dat­ed with calls from frus­trat­ed cus­tomers des­per­ate for so­lu­tions.

“Bands have re­ceived nu­mer­ous phone calls on this is­sue and are now in a quandary. It’s the fourth edi­tion of To­ba­go’s Car­ni­val, and the same prob­lem of meet­ing the de­mand ex­ists,” he added.

Sandy said ad­dress­ing the air­lift chal­lenge must now be treat­ed as a na­tion­al pri­or­i­ty.

“There has to be a con­cert­ed ef­fort to en­sure mas­quer­aders — the peo­ple who are cen­tral to the Car­ni­val — have a smooth ex­pe­ri­ence get­ting to the is­land. TO­CA re­mains com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing the prod­uct re­mains safe and en­joy­able, but we need the mas­quer­aders to have ac­cess to the is­land or else our prod­uct will fail.”

He called for ur­gent talks be­tween Caribbean Air­lines, the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA), and TO­CA.

“There is an ur­gent need for Caribbean Air­lines, the THA and TO­CA to meet and work out a sim­ple but ef­fec­tive strat­e­gy to solve the prob­lem,” Sandy said.

Tem­po­rary Sec­re­tary of Cul­ture and An­tiq­ui­ties Zor­isha Hack­ett ad­mit­ted that the sit­u­a­tion has reached a crit­i­cal stage, with most flights al­ready sold out and ef­forts to se­cure ad­di­tion­al air­lift from Caribbean Air­lines stalling.

“We have not been able to make sig­nif­i­cant gains over the last two or so weeks,” Hack­ett said. “The con­ver­sa­tions con­tin­ue, but you must ap­pre­ci­ate that there are some chal­lenges right now ad­min­is­tra­tive­ly with­in Caribbean Air­lines that are fur­ther com­pound­ing the is­sues we now face.”

Hack­ett con­firmed that the Di­vi­sion has re­peat­ed­ly writ­ten to Caribbean Air­lines and raised the mat­ter at var­i­ous lev­els, but they are still await­ing an ur­gent re­sponse.

“Right now, we’ve met ca­pac­i­ty as it re­lates to what the port has done, and those who have booked have al­ready booked. But we have sev­er­al per­sons in Trinidad, across the Caribbean, and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly just hop­ing and pray­ing that some flights open up,” she said.

She added that the short­age is al­so af­fect­ing artistes and per­form­ers sched­uled to head­line ma­jor events.

“Not on­ly mas­quer­aders — the artistes who need to per­form are al­so be­ing chal­lenged by the lack of flights to get to the is­land,” Hack­ett said.

The Sec­re­tary said the Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil is con­tin­u­ing to lob­by for as­sis­tance and re­mains open to pri­vate char­ter so­lu­tions if nec­es­sary.

“I think at this point we’ve done every­thing we can, and we’re just hop­ing and pray­ing for Caribbean Air­lines to re­al­ly an­swer the pleas and cries of us as To­bag­o­ni­ans. Even if we need to have the con­ver­sa­tion about char­ters, that should prob­a­bly hap­pen now,” she said.