Khara Per­sad

Four large Car­ni­val mas bands–Harts, Tribe, Yu­ma and Bliss–have been giv­en ap­proval by the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) to pa­rade along an ex­tend­ed route on Car­ni­val Tues­day.The route will not take the mas­quer­aders to the tra­di­tion­al main stage at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain, but fur­ther west through Wood­brook and to the "So­cadrome" at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo.This means that for the first time, mas­quer­aders will be al­lowed to go in­to ar­eas out­side down­town and up­town Port-of-Spain.How­ev­er, it al­so means that they will be de­nied the op­por­tu­ni­ty to pa­rade on what many rev­ellers be­lieve is the home of car­ni­val, the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah stage.An NCC press re­lease yes­ter­day said the bands had pro­posed the change since Jan­u­ary 30 and it agreed to go ahead with the idea be­cause it sup­port­ed the idea of free­ing up the con­ges­tion tra­di­tion­al­ly caused by all the mas bands hav­ing to cross the Sa­van­nah stage."... a pro­pos­al was made to es­tab­lish an ex­ten­sion of the pa­rade of the bands route to al­low bands to bet­ter plan their move­ments to al­low a bet­ter mas ex­pe­ri­ence," the NCC said.

The new route will be­gin in St Clair and the bands will pro­ceed west along Queen's Park West and St Clair Av­enue to Damien Street, then move south­ward to­ward Bellesmythe Street to the Mar­aval Park­way.They will then move south on the Mar­aval Park­way to en­ter the sta­di­um com­pound through the west gate and go around the out­side the sta­di­um to the Jean-Pierre Com­plex's west court, which has been named the So­cadrome.There, they will cross a stage and then ex­it the sta­di­um com­pound through the east gate, mov­ing north on Hamil­ton Hold­er/O'Con­ner Street and back to Ari­api­ta Av­enue.About 60 Wood­brook res­i­dents met with Port-of-Spain may­or Ray­mond Tim Kee on Tues­day night and ob­ject­ed to the new route, say­ing Car­ni­val should not ex­tend be­yond the cap­i­tal city since it would re­sult in ex­treme dis­com­fort to them and par­tic­u­lar­ly the el­der­ly.

How­ev­er, Tim Kee said he had no au­thor­i­ty to stop the event if it were okayed by the NCC.The re­lease ad­dressed se­cu­ri­ty, say­ing Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith, in dis­cus­sion with mem­bers of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), had put mea­sures in place to cater to the ex­tend­ed route.It said he as­sured that pro­vi­sions would be made "to in­crease the com­pli­ment of pro­tec­tive per­son­nel with mem­bers of the De­fence Force to en­sure the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of mas­quer­aders, spec­ta­tors and res­i­dents of the Car­ni­val city and its en­vi­rons."