Shir­van Williams

May­or of Ari­ma Ghas­san Youseph yes­ter­day launched Ari­maFest 2012 at the Ari­ma Town Hall and promised a big­ger cel­e­bra­tion this year in spite of fund­ing chal­lenges. This is the sec­ond stag­ing of the Ari­maFest and is be­ing or­gan­ised to cel­e­brate the 124th an­niver­sary of the Roy­al Char­tered Bor­ough of Ari­ma. The theme this year is "Cel­e­brate Ari­ma To­geth­er."

Youseph, speak­ing with the T&T Guardian at his of­fice in the Ari­ma Town Hall, promised the cel­e­bra­tions would be at least four times greater than the funds ex­pend­ed in the event. "We are very ad­ven­tur­ous. The fund­ing is al­ways a chal­lenge but we keep try­ing. Last year was our first ven­ture as a new coun­cil, and our out­put was dou­ble in my es­ti­mate (what) the pre­vi­ous coun­cil the year be­fore," he said.

Youseph said this was be­cause his coun­cil had tak­en the ini­tia­tive to in­tro­duce new at­trac­tions that had gen­er­at­ed greater in­ter­est from res­i­dents of Ari­ma and across the coun­try. "We in­tro­duced new things. We in­tro­duced the food fes­ti­val for the first time in Ari­ma, which was very suc­cess­ful.

"We in­tro­duced an art show, which was sup­posed to be for a week in the town here but went for two weeks, and be­cause it was so suc­cess­ful this time we will run it for four weeks," he said. He added that all this was done with half of the funds that the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion had re­ceived to cel­e­brate Ari­ma's an­niver­sary.

"This year we are do­ing more things. Last year we didn't have parang, this year we are bring­ing parang. We bring­ing some­thing called ParangRa­ma which will be by the Di­al, be­cause Ari­ma is the cap­i­tal of parang," he said. The may­or al­so said a float would be fea­tured in time to cel­e­brate the 50th an­niver­sary of In­de­pen­dence, which he said was a "sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone."

At the launch, deputy may­or Pa­tri­cia Ce­de­no-Metivi­er, chair of the cel­e­bra­tion com­mit­tee, re­vealed more de­tails. "From the revered mil­i­tary pa­rade and civic re­cep­tion to a so­phis­ti­cat­ed art ex­hi­bi­tion and an el­e­gant Bor­ough Queen Show, from ParangRa­ma and the well-beloved Bor­ough Day street jump-up to a food fes­ti­val and the first ever box­cart der­by, we are con­fi­dent that there is some­thing for every­one in this year's Bor­ough cel­e­bra­tions," she said.