Kali­fa Clyne

One of the or­gan­is­ers of the Pan Splash tent that was set up at the Greens for the Panora­ma semi­fi­nals de­fend­ed the 70-foot pool yes­ter­day.Few pa­trons enoyed it dur­ing Sun­day's pan semis in the Sa­van­nah, how­ev­er.Pan Trin­ba­go pres­i­dent Kei­th Di­az re­fused to com­ment on the pool, which was a col­lab­o­ra­tive ven­ture be­tween Aqua Fun Park and Pan Trin­ba­go."I am not talk­ing about no Pan Splash. I talked about it enough al­ready," Di­az said yes­ter­day in a tele­phone in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian.The pool came un­der heavy crit­i­cism from pan en­thu­si­asts and pan­men last week. Phase II Pan Groove com­pos­er Len "Boogsie" Sharpe called it a "dis­re­spect" to the na­tion­al in­stru­ment, a word usu­al­ly used to de­scribe the Greens as a whole.

How­ev­er, one of­fi­cial from Aqua Fun Park, the com­pa­ny which or­gan­ised the event, said Pan Splash was help­ing the pan mu­sic.De­bra Cum­ber­batch, an Aqua Fun Park of­fi­cial, yes­ter­day de­scribed the Greens as Pan Trin­ba­go's new ini­tia­tive to raise funds and said Pan Splash, like the oth­er cor­po­rate tents, was con­tribut­ing fi­nan­cial­ly to the pan."Over 55 com­pa­nies are rep­re­sent­ed in the Greens and they are all here for pro­mo­tion­al pur­pos­es, but the mon­ey spent to have a tent sup­ports the pan," Cum­ber­batch said.She said Aqua Fun Park chose to bring a pool be­cause it was in­no­v­a­tive and there was no bet­ter way to pro­mote the com­pa­ny."We iden­ti­fy with wa­ter and the pool. There is no dis­re­spect to pan."We are giv­ing peo­ple an op­por­tu­ni­ty to have fun."

She said Aqua Fun Park was all about fun for chil­dren and fam­i­lies.De­spite the crit­i­cism lev­elled at it, Pan Splash might have been the on­ly tent to in­cor­po­rate pan in its tent. The group had a stage set up with the PHI pan, which fea­tured pan per­for­mances.Cum­ber­batch al­so point­ed out that the group had tak­en care of the lo­gis­tics, with hi-tech wa­ter fil­ters and bathing fa­cil­i­ties."It is not the dirty, nasty wa­ter peo­ple are talk­ing about," she said.The group did not re­ceive a lot of pa­trons, though, some­thing Cum­ber­batch blamed on neg­a­tive re­ports in the me­dia.Though life­guards were sta­tioned around the perime­ter of the pool, it re­mained emp­ty for most of the af­ter­noon. At around 7 pm a group of five peo­ple were seen splash­ing around in it.