Yvonne?Ba­boolal

Gov­ern­ment al­lo­ca­tions for Car­ni­val 2017 have suf­fered yet an­oth­er cut. Ac­cord­ing to Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) chair­man, Ken­ny de Sil­va, al­lo­ca­tions for Car­ni­val bod­ies have been cut by just un­der 25 per cent.

This is a fur­ther re­duc­tion from the Gov­ern­ment's $270 mil­lion bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion for Car­ni­val 2016.

In 2015, the al­lo­ca­tion for Car­ni­val was $314 mil­lion.

Cul­ture, Arts and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly, re­spond­ing to a ques­tion in the Sen­ate on Mon­day, did not get a to­tal over­all fig­ure but said Pan Trin­ba­go will get some $23 mil­lion, the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Band­lead­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (NC­BA), around $9 mil­lion and the Gov­ern­ment will give an­oth­er $7,290,000 for groups fa­cil­i­tat­ed by the NCC, like the Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans As­so­ci­a­tion (Tu­co).

The min­is­ter said al­lo­ca­tions are paid in tranch­es and, so far, Tu­co has re­ceived over $1 mil­lion, Pan Trin­ba­go, over $7 mil­lion and the NC­BA $233,722.

De Sil­va said it was ini­tial­ly pro­posed Tu­co gets $9 mil­lion but Gov­ern­ment de­cid­ed to re­duce it to $7,290,000 be­cause of the state of the econ­o­my.

Pan Trin­ba­go's ini­tial fig­ure was cut from $30,780,000 to $23,085,000.

The NCC's own costs for putting up in­fra­struc­ture, se­cu­ri­ty and san­i­ta­tion were usu­al­ly around $100 mil­lion and the com­mis­sion would nor­mal­ly get the nec­es­sary fund­ing to cov­er its ex­pens­es, he added.

De Sil­va said the al­lo­ca­tions for the var­i­ous bod­ies were just around the same as for the 2016 Car­ni­val and he did not com­plain, pre­fer­ring to say in­stead the NCC and all bod­ies are work­ing in har­mo­ny to pro­duce a good Car­ni­val 2017.

"We al­so have a help­ful min­is­ter who un­der­stands our chal­lenges," he added.

The T&T Guardian got a slight­ly dif­fer­ent pic­ture from the Car­ni­val bod­ies.

Kei­th Di­az, Pan Trin­ba­go's pres­i­dent, stress­ing he was not crit­i­cis­ing the min­is­ter, said they have on­ly re­ceived $501,000 in their hands so far.

Fur­ther, the pan body is still owed $2.8 mil­lion from the 2016 Car­ni­val.

"In Oc­to­ber, the min­is­ter paid us $5 mil­lion out of the $7.8 re­mit­tance for 2016."

Not­ing this was a prob­lem over time, Di­az said Pan Trin­ba­go had an ini­tial bud­get of $31 mil­lion but made their own cut to $24.7 mil­lion.

He said out of that fig­ure, $2.5 mil­lion goes to­wards bands from To­ba­go that come down to Trinidad for Panora­ma.

"It means that we (in Trinidad) will re­al­ly be work­ing with about $22 mil­lion."

Asked how he would feel about ac­cept­ing the min­is­ter's fig­ure of $23 mil­lion for both To­ba­go and Trinidad, Di­az said: "I don't want to an­swer that ques­tion."

Broth­er Re­sis­tance (Lu­ta­lo Masim­ba), pres­i­dent of Tu­co, was more gra­cious con­cern­ing the is­sue of re­duced al­lo­ca­tions.

"We are pre­pared to work with what­ev­er is pre­scribed by the Gov­ern­ment through the NCC."

Re­sis­tance said it is un­for­tu­nate when there are cuts where Car­ni­val in­ter­est groups are con­cerned but added he un­der­stood.

"We un­der­stand the eco­nom­ic cli­mate and eco­nom­ic re­al­i­ty.

"As a na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tion, we are pre­pared to act re­spon­si­bly and im­ple­ment what­ev­er cuts are nec­es­sary in or­der to de­liv­er the prod­uct."

Re­sis­tance said Tu­co de­liv­ers the ca­lyp­so com­po­nent of Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions for the NCC but said he has no of­fi­cial in­for­ma­tion as yet on what Tu­co is to re­ceive for Car­ni­val 2017.

He said TU­CO ex­ists from month to month on sub­ven­tions from the NCC.

Re­sis­tance said Tu­co's main con­cern was get­ting a se­cure venue for its tent and pay­ing ad­vances to con­tract­ed singers who de­pend on this.

David Lopez, NC­BA pres­i­dent, said he had no com­ment to make on what­ev­er the min­is­ter or the NCC said.

"At the ap­pro­pri­ate time we will call a press con­fer­ence," he promised.