Michelle Loubon

Red kiosks stacked with leather craft, paint­ings, erot­ic art, wal­lets, wood carv­ings and hand­bags have sprung up at the en­trance to the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain. But a cho­rus of ven­dors lament­ed po­ten­tial cus­tomers were pre­vent­ed from en­ter­ing the booths be­cause of the width of the doors. Among those who com­plained were pres­i­dent of T&T Leather and Craft As­so­ci­a­tion, Shawn Noel. He said: "They promised us quar­ter-inch floors. We have not got any. We have asked to get our doors open. The tourists are not com­ing in. A lot of the roofs are leak­ing."

Roland Warn­er, a mem­ber of the as­so­ci­a­tion, who has ex­hib­it­ed in San­to Domin­go, said: "Peo­ple can­not see from the out­side. You need to be able to see the craft. "You are not sell­ing sweets. It is craft. It needs to be seen. Out­side the booths is very dark. "And peo­ple feel as if they are not wel­come. "Be­fore, for oth­er Car­ni­vals, we have had to cut open the doors our­selves." Warn­er al­so said crafts­men were not giv­en re­spect like oth­er stake­hold­ers.

Vel Lewis com­ments

When con­tact­ed, act­ing Deputy Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary (Min­istry of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism) Vel Lewis said: "To­mor­row, I will be back in the coun­try and raise it with Clarence Moe (Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion CEO).