An­ge­lo Je­didi­ah

While some pan­nists are grate­ful for Gov­ern­ment’s fi­nan­cial con­tri­bu­tion to Panora­ma 2023, Pan Trin­ba­go pledges to lob­by for more monies.

In a me­dia re­lease, the Min­istry of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts an­nounced that Cab­i­net has ap­proved the pay­ment of a $500 to each steel­pan play­er for Panora­ma 2023. The grant was in­tro­duced 1998 but re­moved in 2017.

Pan Trin­ba­go pres­i­dent Bev­er­ley Ram­sey-Moore said the re­moval of the pay­ments be­tween 2018-2020 was due to an au­dit of the or­gan­i­sa­tion that re­sult­ed in un­favourable find­ings.

“Since this new ex­ec­u­tive has been elect­ed in­to of­fice, we can boast that we would have brought our au­dits up to date. For the very first time in a num­ber of years, Pan Trin­ba­go now has two clean au­dits, 2021 and 2022,” she said.

Ram­sey-Moore added that the cur­rent ex­ec­u­tive has “re­paired the brand” of Pan Trin­ba­go and is more con­fi­dent to ne­go­ti­ate for the re­turn of $1000 re­mit­tances in the fu­ture.

Cab­i­net al­so ap­proved a to­tal of $1.85m for 153 un­spon­sored steel­bands which Ram­sey-Moore said was “very re­ward­ing.”

“These bands have been work­ing ex­treme­ly hard. Steel­band in it­self is an in­dus­try. When those bands re­ceive that as­sis­tance, it is go­ing to trick­le right back in­to the econ­o­my, from tuners, arrangers, welders to painters. Panora­ma is a very ex­pen­sive prod­uct.”

Ram­sey-Moore as­sured that Pan Trin­ba­go will over­see and mon­i­tor all out­go­ing pay­ments to dis­cour­age fraud by per­sons col­lect­ing more than one pay­ment.

“We are go­ing to pro­vide strict over­sight in terms of mon­i­tor­ing all the bands to en­sure that there is no dou­ble pay­ment. That is not go­ing to hap­pen un­der my watch,” she said.