Yvonne?Ba­boolal

This was in­di­cat­ed by Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly, Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Cul­ture and Arts, as she dis­closed de­clin­ing or very stag­nant tourist ar­rivals and dwin­dling au­di­ences at Car­ni­val events are what forced the Gov­ern­ment to in­ter­vene in its af­fairs.

The min­is­ter was re­spond­ing to an ur­gent ques­tion from Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark short­ly be­fore the ad­journ­ment of the Up­per House on Tues­day on the is­sue of the con­fu­sion sur­round­ing the roles of Pan Trin­ba­go, Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans Or­gan­i­sa­tion (Tu­co), the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Band­lead­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (NC­BA) and the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) in the stag­ing of Car­ni­val.

Mark said in di­rect con­tra­ven­tion to a Cab­i­net Minute of 1997 un­der the Bas­deo Pan­day ad­min­is­tra­tion, the NCC seems to be the body in charge of col­lect­ing rev­enue from tick­et sales with spe­cial in­ter­est groups rel­e­gat­ed to on­ly play­ing mi­nor roles.

Mark said the Kei­th Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion changed that par­a­digm af­ter it as­sumed of­fice in Sep­tem­ber 2015 and last year went a step fur­ther. "They took pan and kaiso away."

He said the "plot was hatched" since De­cem­ber 8, 2016 when Gads­by-Dol­ly wrote a let­ter to NCC chair­man, Ken­ny de Sil­va, mak­ing rec­om­men­da­tions for the man­age­ment of Car­ni­val.

In the let­ter, which fol­lows a meet­ing be­tween the two par­ties on De­cemver 5, 2016, the min­is­ter rec­om­mend­ed that while Car­ni­val spe­cial in­ter­est groups plan and ex­e­cute events, ac­cord­ing to a NCC bud­get, it was the NCC it­self that should han­dle pay­ments to prizewin­ners and oth­ers.

The min­is­ter fur­ther rec­om­mend­ed the NCC con­trols the sale of tick­ets at na­tion­al events.

"How come, with­out any dis­cus­sion with the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, the Gov­ern­ment has tak­en over the con­trol of Car­ni­val, kick­ing out Pan Trin­ba­go?" Mark asked.

Not­ing he found this alarm­ing, Mark asked the Gov­ern­ment for clar­i­ty on the mat­ter.

Gads­by-Dol­ly, re­spond­ing, said Mark did not make ref­er­ence to the part of the Minute that stat­ed the at­tor­ney gen­er­al should re­view the NCC Act of 1991 to give ef­fect to the poli­cies set out.

"In or­der to en­act the pol­i­cy we need­ed to change the Act," the min­is­ter said. She said Car­ni­val end­ed up in a sit­u­a­tion where spe­cial in­ter­est groups were sit­ting on the NCC board re­sult­ing in role con­fu­sion.

"You have pan, mas, ca­lyp­so and the NCC all try­ing to do their own thing," adding a "four-head­ed type of in­sti­tu­tion" was run­ning the show.