BO­BIE-LEE DIXON

bo­bie-lee.dixon@guardian.co.tt

Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans’ Or­gan­i­sa­tion (Tu­co) pres­i­dent Lu­ta­lo “Broth­er Re­sis­tance,” Masim­ba said he wants en­ter­tain­ers to be pre­pared to cross the bor­ders to make their liv­ing once the T&T bor­ders are re­opened.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view, he told Guardian Me­dia, it is, for this rea­son, the or­gan­i­sa­tion, penned Min­is­ter of Health, Ter­rance Deyals­ingh yes­ter­day to re­quest Tu­co’s in­clu­sion in the Min­istry of Health’s na­tion­al vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve.

“It would take quite a while for the en­ter­tain­ment sec­tor lo­cal­ly to re­al­ly get back to a vi­able place. And there is a num­ber of per­sons who would usu­al­ly look to for­eign lands for job op­por­tu­ni­ties. So that we are say­ing as long as the bor­ders of the world re­open, it is ob­vi­ous per­sons in the en­ter­tain­ment sec­tor would like to be pre­pared to trav­el and look for some sort of op­por­tu­ni­ties that may present them­selves,” said Masim­ba.

But with the cam­paign wind­ing down on the first batch of vac­cines, why did Tu­co’s re­quest come this late? Masim­ba ex­plained the en­ter­tain­ment sec­tor in T&T was not deemed “front­line” al­though it was how most made their dai­ly bread.

“The process was a bit con­fus­ing be­cause at first, they (Min­istry of Health) said that front­line work­ers would take pri­or­i­ty, then they spoke about mak­ing ap­points by phone and What­sApp and then they said politi­cians would be in­clud­ed in the start­ing dri­ve. So when they said politi­cians, we said okay, let us see how we can ac­cess the vac­ci­na­tion,” Masim­ba ex­pound­ed.

In a re­lease from Tu­co, it in­formed of its spe­cial re­quest sent to Deyals­ingh and shared some of its writ­ten con­tent.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion said, “As you are well aware, the en­ter­tain­ment sec­tor has been re­duced to ‘ground ze­ro’ since March 2020. This means that all cre­atives and cul­tur­al prac­ti­tion­ers have been trapped in a des­per­ate sit­u­a­tion for more than a year now. While we un­der­stand and ac­knowl­edge that the en­tire world is en­gaged in this bat­tle against the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, we al­so would like to un­der­line the re­al­i­ty in the en­ter­tain­ment sec­tor where sav­ing our liveli­hood is al­most the same as sav­ing lives.”

It added, “We wish to make a spe­cial re­quest for your Min­istry to give spe­cial con­sid­er­a­tion to the mem­bers of the en­ter­tain­ment sec­tor, and es­pe­cial­ly to the ca­lyp­so, so­ca artistes and mu­si­cians in the on­go­ing cam­paign.”

Masim­ba said the re­quest was not for the manda­to­ry vac­ci­na­tion of all in the en­ter­tain­ment sec­tor as in­di­vid­u­als could choose to be vac­ci­nat­ed or not, but, he fore­sees vac­ci­na­tion might be the on­ly means by which peo­ple could en­ter some coun­tries and it was bet­ter if lo­cal artistes and en­ter­tain­ers were be pre­pared.

Guardian Me­dia al­so spoke to a cou­ple of peo­ple in the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try who agreed Tu­co’s re­quest was nec­es­sary for the sur­vival of the in­dus­try, but one al­so ex­pressed some en­ter­tain­ers earned their mon­ey right here in T&T and were suf­fer­ing and in need of some plan to help them keep their bread and but­ter.

Thes­pi­an and come­di­enne, Pene­lope Spencer said the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try was be­ing treat­ed like dregs. She said while she ap­plaud­ed Tu­co on the move and any en­ter­tain­er who would get vac­ci­nat­ed if they thought it would al­low them to trav­el, her con­cern lied with the drought in the lo­cal the­atre in­dus­try.

“Clos­ing the the­atre spaces in­def­i­nite­ly is more of my con­cern. I don’t know when the bor­ders are go­ing to be opened but there are a lot of en­ter­tain­ers who work right here in T&T and clo­sure of the per­form­ing spaces in the coun­try was more of a pri­or­i­ty,” said Spencer.

Masim­ba said he had not re­ceived a re­sponse from Deyals­ingh.

Guardian Me­dia tried reach­ing Deyals­ingh to find out if he was in re­ceipt of Tu­co’s re­quest let­ter and what con­sid­er­a­tions, if any, might be giv­en to it, but calls and a What­sApp mes­sage went unan­swered.