Yvonne Webb

For the third con­sec­u­tive year,Gov­ern­ment has re­duced its sub­ven­tion forthe Chut­ney So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tion.

This time the cut is­by75 per cent–from$4.5 mil­lion in 2015 and$3.5 mil­lion in 2016, the fig­ure is down to $1.18 mil­lion this year.

George Singh, Southex CEO and pro­duc­er of the event, said with spon­sors al­so cut­ting back it is be­com­ing very dif­fi­cult to pro­duce the show.

"I don't know how long we will be able to­con­tin­ue. The sig­nal com­ing from Gov­ern­ment is that they want to take away the sub­ven­tion al­to­geth­er. If they do, the show will die," he said yes­ter­day.

Singh said he was dis­ap­point­ed be­cause the com­pe­ti­tion is the on­ly ma­jor plat­form for In­do cul­ture in Car­ni­val.He said he knew cuts were com­ing be­cause of the eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion, but did not ex­pect it to be so dras­tic.

"I would like the Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Cul­ture and Gen­der Af­fairs to iden­ti­fy one project they do forthe de­vel­op­ment of In­di­an cul­ture for the year. There is not one. This is the biggest plat­form. $1 mil­lion for Chut­ney So­ca Monarch ... some­thing is def­i­nite­ly wrong with that," he said.

Singh said when he was ad­vised by a let­ter from theM­i­nistry­that $1.18m had been al­lo­cat­ed for the 2017 Pick 2 Chut­ney So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tion, ad­just­ments were made to the prize struc­ture.

The first prize is $500,000, in­stead of the $1m award­ed the year be­fore. Sec­ond prize has been dras­ti­cal­ly re­duced­from$500,000 to $150,000 and the third prize from $300,000 to $75,000.

Com­peti­tors who place fourth to tenth in the fi­nals re­ceived $100,000 each be­fore but this year the fig­ure has been re­duced to $25,000 each.

For the World's Ul­ti­mate Chut­ney chal­lenge seg­ment of the show, the first prize has al­so been slashed t0$100,000, from $200,000 and sec­ond to tenth place con­tes­tants will all re­ceive an ap­pear­ance fee of $20,000.

The grand fi­nale takes place at Skin­ner Park, San Fer­nan­do, on Feb­ru­ary 11 with nine artistes com­pet­ing against reign­ing monarch KI for the ti­tle.