The Copy­right Mu­sic Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (COTT) will be pro­vid­ing its mem­bers with a care pack­age, which it says will pro­vide some as­sis­tance, dur­ing the cur­rent COVID-19 cri­sis.

In a news re­lease, COTT says the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try has been hard hit by the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, and the de­ci­sion was tak­en to help mem­bers, fol­low­ing an ex­ten­sive im­pact as­sess­ment of the in­dus­try.

The care pack­age will be made avail­able to mem­bers by Fri­day 15 May 2020.

The full text of the state­ment from COTT, fol­lows…

COTT PRE­PARES COVID-19 CARE PACK­AGE FOR MEM­BERS

The im­pact of the COVID-19 Pan­dem­ic on the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try has been noth­ing short of cat­a­clysmic, from can­celled events, fes­ti­vals, and car­ni­vals to closed night­clubs and stu­dios. Reper­cus­sions are be­ing felt at every lev­el of the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try with cre­ators bear­ing the brunt of it.  Hav­ing un­der­tak­en an Im­pact As­sess­ment, the Board  and Ex­ec­u­tive of the Copy­right Mu­sic Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (COTT) held a spe­cial sit­ting, where the de­ci­sion was tak­en to pro­vide mem­bers with a care pack­age, aimed at pro­vid­ing some mea­sure as­sis­tance dur­ing this dif­fi­cult time. The ini­tia­tive will cost a lit­tle over three mil­lion dol­lars ($3,000,000.00) and is set to be dis­pensed by Fri­day May 15, 2020.

Mr.  Arnold not­ed that, “it goes with­out say­ing, we share the bur­den of the im­pact that this pan­dem­ic has had on our mem­bers. There­fore, we felt it nec­es­sary to do as much as we could to of­fer some mea­sure of re­lief”

He then went on to  em­pha­size the im­por­tance of en­sur­ing that there are ad­e­quate ef­forts in place to as­sist cre­ators dur­ing this time, as well as a  plan to en­sure that  the sec­tor re­cov­ers in the long-term, stat­ing “We hope that this in­spires oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions to lend their sup­port to an in­dus­try that has giv­en us so much as a so­ci­ety”

Mem­bers are ad­vised that ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion will be forth­com­ing sub­se­quent­ly and are en­cour­aged to con­tact mem­ber­ship@cott.org.tt for any ques­tions that they may have.

“We are in this to­geth­er”

Mr John Arnold
Pres­i­dent
Copy­right Mu­sic Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (COTT)