Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

So­ca king Machel Mon­tano should be part of a group of 'young blood' to take the prod­uct-which is Car­ni­val-in a new di­rec­tion for it to last 100 years. Port-of-Spain may­or Louis Lee Sing made this state­ment yes­ter­day at the month­ly statu­to­ry meet­ing of the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion, Knox Street, Port-of-Spain. He said time had come for the coun­try to recog­nise that the peo­ple who have been plan­ning and or­gan­is­ing Car­ni­val "year in year out" for the last 50 years should take a rest and give the younger gen­er­a­tion a chance. He called names like Dane and Der­rick Lewis, An­tho­ny Chow Lin On, John­ny Soong and Mon­tano.

Lee Sing said: "We need to put all these young peo­ple in a room and tell them to could up with a plan for Car­ni­val be­cause what we are do­ing is that we are killing Car­ni­val." He said there were al­so "bright" women who could be part of that group. He said there need­ed to be peo­ple who un­der­stood lo­gis­tics and know to move peo­ple from one point to an­oth­er very quick­ly. The may­or said the pa­rade route for bands has re­mained small while the bands have been ex­pand­ing, which re­sult­ed in con­ges­tion at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah.

He al­so cit­ed oth­er prob­lems such as vend­ing along the route and a change in the judg­ing points. Lee Sing said: "I am ask­ing the peo­ple that now con­trol the thing to do what is right. "I am say­ing to­day, let us be­gin to think about plan­ning the Car­ni­val. "We don't have to look to bring any con­sul­tants from over­seas. "We don't need any Dutch, any Amer­i­can, any British, any Brazil­ian, Chi­nese...no one to tell us how to re-in­vent this mas." (RKR)