The Min­istry of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts has is­sued a state­ment re­spond­ing to dis­cus­sion in the pub­lic do­main on its pro­pos­al for stag­ing Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions this year, ti­tled “ A Taste of Car­ni­val 2022”.

The full text of the Min­istry’s state­ment fol­lows…

The Min­istry of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts takes note of the com­ments in the pub­lic do­main re­lat­ed to the head­line in Thurs­day’s (Thurs­day, 20, 2022) Dai­ly Ex­press, “Car­ni­val is On”.

It is un­for­tu­nate that the state­ment re­leased by this Min­istry was mis­in­ter­pret­ed by the Dai­ly Ex­press which caused the mis­lead­ing head­line, “Car­ni­val is On”.

This mis­lead­ing head­line has, un­der­stand­ably, gen­er­at­ed neg­a­tive feed­back from some of this Min­istry’s most valu­able Car­ni­val and event in­dus­try stake­hold­ers who may have con­nect­ed the head­line in the Dai­ly Ex­press to the Min­istry’s po­si­tions on Car­ni­val 2022.

To re­it­er­ate, the Min­istry has pro­posed a “Taste of Car­ni­val” which would in­clude spe­cif­ic types of Car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ties for vac­ci­nat­ed per­sons on­ly in safe zone arrange­ments deemed to pose the least risk from a pub­lic health stand­point in the con­text of the on­go­ing COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.  These Car­ni­val type ac­tiv­i­ties in­clude, Ca­lyp­so, So­ca, Ex­tem­po, Chut­ney, and Steel Pan shows and com­pe­ti­tions usu­al­ly held dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son. The Min­istry has not pro­posed that Car­ni­val in its truest sense be held, nor did it ever at­tempt mis­lead any­one as it per­tains to its pro­pos­al for safe Car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ties to be held dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son.

At the Min­istry, we ac­knowl­edge the hard­ship be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced by the events in­dus­try and by all cul­ture work­ers as in­di­cat­ed re­cent­ly by our val­ued stake­hold­ers. And in that re­gard, we con­tin­ue to work to­geth­er, as we al­ways have, to bring re­lief, and to con­sid­er and im­ple­ment pro­pos­als for an ear­ly, but safe and cau­tious restart to the en­tire en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try.

The Min­istry al­so ac­knowl­edges that these events as pro­posed in its Taste of Car­ni­val 2022 pro­pos­al can­not and is not a re­place­ment to the nu­mer­ous op­por­tu­ni­ties and events that a full Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tion pro­vides. 

We strong­ly en­cour­age every­one to be vac­ci­nat­ed and urge the event stake­hold­ers to con­tin­ue to join us in that call at every op­por­tu­ni­ty.