Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Chair­man of the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) Win­ston “Gyp­sy” Pe­ters is con­fi­dent that Car­ni­val 2024 has the po­ten­tial to be one of the is­land’s best cel­e­bra­tions in re­cent years de­spite a re­duced sub­ven­tion from the Gov­ern­ment. Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia be­fore lead­ing mas­quer­aders and mu­si­cians across the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah’s Grand Stand at the launch of Car­ni­val 2024on Sat­urday, a high-spir­it­ed Pe­ters said a re­duced gov­ern­ment al­lo­ca­tion did not damp­en spir­its.

He con­tend­ed that the NCC was pre­pared to make their al­lo­ca­tion work and boast­ed that fa­mil­iar at­trac­tions would be en­hanced for wider en­joy­ment.

“Even though we have got­ten less mon­ey from the Gov­ern­ment, we still have to make it do, so peo­ple will be get­ting all of that. So when peo­ple talk about wastage in Car­ni­val, some of these peo­ple who win a prize here and they might get a $100,000 or a $200,000 they may nev­er see that again in their life, Car­ni­val do that for them ... We will be re­dou­bling it be­cause we did a lot of in­ter­ven­tion out­side of Trinidad and To­ba­go and we ex­pect to see a lot more peo­ple com­ing.”

Re­fer­ring to the live­ly pro­ces­sion, Pe­ters said long-time spec­ta­tors of the cel­e­bra­tion can ex­pect a vi­brant, colour­ful dis­play for the up­com­ing cel­e­bra­tion. He not­ed that while Car­ni­val had cel­e­bra­tions in vir­tu­al­ly every com­mu­ni­ty across both is­lands, he felt there should be some im­prove­ment in the qual­i­ty of the plan­ning.

“There can be im­prove­ments in the com­mu­ni­ty where we have the re­gion­al Car­ni­val, but we can’t go nowhere else. We have a Car­ni­val in To­ba­go and all, so that means we went as far as we can go,” Pe­ters said.

Pe­ters and mem­bers of the TTPS band and tas­sa drum­mers led a pro­ces­sion of mas­quer­aders which in­clud­ed tra­di­tion­al mas char­ac­ters like the Mid­night Rob­ber, Fan­cy Sailors and Moko Jumbies lin­ger­ing amidst “pret­ty” mas­quer­aders as they chipped to the beat across the Grand Stand.