Kali­fa Clyne

Mas band or­gan­i­sa­tions are hap­py with the $844,000 in­crease in prize mon­ey for the Kings and Queens com­pe­ti­tion de­spite a dis­crep­an­cy be­tween the amount promised by Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Min­is­ter Lin­coln Dou­glas and what was an­nounced by the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) yes­ter­day.

It came in a press re­lease yes­ter­day, just one week af­ter Dou­glas an­nounced a $27.8 mil­lion in­crease in fund­ing for Car­ni­val 2013 at a post-Cab­i­net press con­fer­ence.Dur­ing the press con­fer­ence, Dou­glas promised ad­di­tion­al fund­ing of $1.6 mil­lion in prizes for the Car­ni­val Kings and Queens.The com­pe­ti­tion prizes on­ly ac­count for about 50 per cent of that amount.

In the re­lease, the NCC said the to­tal al­lo­ca­tion for that com­pe­ti­tion amount­ed to $844,000."These in­creas­es have been al­lo­cat­ed to the ten po­si­tions in each of the Kings and Queens fi­nals com­pe­ti­tion," it said. "The to­tal paid to each of the first place se­nior King and Queen will now be in­creased to $250,000 from the 2012 fig­ure of $120,000 each. The to­tal prize fund for all win­ners of the se­nior Kings and Queens fi­nal com­pe­ti­tions will move from a 2012 fig­ure of $824,000, more than dou­bling in 2013 to $1,668,000."

The Ca­lyp­so Monarch prize which was raised to $1 mil­lion af­ter boy­cott threats from ca­lyp­so­ni­ans last year, re­mains the same.In a brief tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Bands As­so­ci­a­tion (NC­BA) David Lopez re­fused to com­ment on the dis­crep­an­cy."I don't know where you get your fig­ures from, but I am not talk­ing to you about that," Lopez said.He said the in­crease for the com­pe­ti­tion was wel­come.

"It was long in com­ing, the NC­BA had been lob­by­ing pre­vi­ous­ly for in­creas­es in the prize mon­ey for com­pe­ti­tions," he said."We sat down with Min­is­ter Dou­glas and the chair­man of the NCC and dis­cussed it and we were giv­en a com­mit­ment that the in­crease would hap­pen. We are very hap­py with it."Di­rec­tor of the T&T Car­ni­val Bands As­so­ci­a­tion (TTC­BA) Ger­ard Weekes said it was un­der­stand­able that Dou­glas would have said one thing and de­liv­ered an­oth­er.

"We ex­pect­ed that they would have to take a clos­er look at the fig­ures be­fore a fi­nal de­ci­sion was made," Weekes said.He said the Car­ni­val sea­son was a short one and the main is­sue of con­tention be­tween the TTC­BA and the NCC had been that putting the show on Fri­day would not al­low it to be prof­itable."We have got an in­crease, the first prize has dou­bled and we are hap­py for it," he said.

"The most im­por­tant as­pects of our com­plaints were the fa­cil­i­ties and the mon­i­tor­ing of the ad­ju­di­ca­tion sys­tem, and these things are be­ing ad­dressed."The re­lease an­nounced 36 per cent in ad­di­tion­al ap­proved fund­ing, or $480,500, had been al­lo­cat­ed to Ju­nior Kings and Queens in their school/non-school, open and Ju­nior King and Queen of the day com­pe­ti­tions.

In 2012, the to­tal prize al­lo­ca­tion for Ju­nior events was $143,550 and for 2013 the fig­ure has been in­creased to $624,050.Ju­nior mas band­leader Ros­alind Gabriel said the in­crease for ju­nior prizes was some­thing she was hap­py for.Dou­glas could not be reached via e-mail or tele­phone yes­ter­day and his as­sis­tant Ed­ward Metvi­er said he had left the coun­try.Sev­er­al at­tempts to reach De­mas by e-mail, tele­phone and through NCC's com­mu­ni­ca­tions of­fi­cers were un­suc­cess­ful.

The prize struc­ture for Panora­ma and the Ca­lyp­so Monarch re­main the same as in 2012.