Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Jour­nal­ist

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

One week af­ter grid­lock traf­fic en­gulfed the West­ern Penin­su­la for most of the day fol­low­ing the Stink and Dut­ty fete held at the Ch­aguara­mas He­li­port on Feb­ru­ary 7, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says the par­ty can hap­pen again at the same lo­ca­tion next year.

“Sure, why not. As long as they ful­fil all the re­quire­ments and ob­tain all ap­provals,” she told Guardian Me­dia last week in re­sponse to ques­tions on the mat­ter.

In con­trast, ear­li­er in the week, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der said the fete could be banned from the area, based on po­lice ad­vice and the chal­lenges ex­pe­ri­enced.

Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty work­ers said it took them three days to clean the area af­ter the Stink and Dut­ty fete was held there.

When asked about the fete’s plan­ning, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said there is al­ways room for im­prove­ment.

The PM be­lieved that even with the ban­ning of events from the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my and the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, the coun­try had suf­fi­cient suit­able venues to host large-scale Car­ni­val events.

“The PNM MPs and coun­cil­lors for Diego Mar­tin were cry­ing for these same Stink and Dut­ty fete pro­mot­ers just the oth­er day. They had no care when oth­er MPs’ con­stituents near the Lara sta­di­um were be­ing in­con­ve­nienced. The PNM want­ed fete, so take fete now,” she added.

The Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to ban fetes from na­tion­al sta­di­ums last No­vem­ber left pro­mot­ers scram­bling for venues for Car­ni­val par­ties. With lim­it­ed op­tions for large-scale events, the West­ern Penin­su­la, with one road in and out, be­came a hub of ac­tiv­i­ty, host­ing over 20 events, in­clu­sive of boat cruis­es for the six weeks lead­ing up to Car­ni­val.

While Ch­aguara­mas ful­fils the re­quire­ments for space and caters for noise which does not dis­turb res­i­dents, the con­cern re­mains pub­lic and en­vi­ron­men­tal safe­ty.

In the case of the He­li­port, con­cerns were raised about whether it was in the coun­try’s na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty in­ter­est to host a par­ty at that venue, giv­en that it is un­der the purview of the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force (TTDF).

At a press con­fer­ence held on Fri­day, De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge said the Chief of De­fence Staff, Don Po­lo, was in­volved every step of the way.

“We took in­to ac­count that we can man­age the event and man­age po­ten­tial se­cu­ri­ty is­sues and, in essence, we had no se­cu­ri­ty breach­es,” Sturge said.

He said there was nev­er a risk to the fete be­cause there were suf­fi­cient re­sources in place, both hu­man and oth­er­wise.

“So it was gen­er­al­ly safe. We should have made bet­ter use of it in terms of hav­ing road­blocks and so on, but we didn’t want to cause may­hem. There were a num­ber of lessons learnt,” he said.

Fete plan

Ac­cord­ing to sources in­volved in the plan­ning of Stink and Dut­ty, the event’s or­gan­is­ing com­mit­tee met with the Care­nage Po­lice Sta­tion and the Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty (CDA) four times.

The sources, who all asked not to be named, added that the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty grant­ed per­mis­sion for the use of the He­li­port, and the fol­low­ing ac­tions were tak­en in an at­tempt to mit­i­gate traf­fic:

All eight car parks in the vicin­i­ty were booked by the Air Com­mit­tee, but this still to­talled few­er than 3,000 park­ing spots.

There were 300 drop-offs by boat at La Soufriere Mar­itime Lim­it­ed.

Traf­fic po­lice were hired and were present four hours be­fore and af­ter the event.

Four pri­vate wreck­ers were hired to work with po­lice to keep the road­way clear.

WASA and the Min­istry of Works paved pot­holes to pre­vent the slow­ing of traf­fic.

Twelve traf­fic war­dens were pro­vid­ed by the State at no cost.

Ac­cord­ing to sources, the or­gan­is­ers con­tact­ed Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (NID­CO) and Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC) in an at­tempt to char­ter wa­ter taxis and 15 bus­es, but both re­quests were re­ject­ed.

PTSC’s Man­ag­er of Stake­hold­er En­gage­ment, Pa­t­ri­na Ma­habir, con­firmed that a re­quest could not be ac­com­mo­dat­ed.

“Re­mem­ber that it is an oil, grease and paint fete, and that could dam­age the fab­ric…Nor­mal­ly, we put out a no­tice dur­ing Car­ni­val that they would not be al­lowed to board the bus if their cos­tume is full of oil, grease, or paint, to pro­tect the as­set,” she said.

How­ev­er, de­spite the re­ject­ed re­quests from NID­CO and PTSC, the par­ty’s com­mit­tee did not ap­proach the Route 2 Maxi Taxi As­so­ci­a­tion to char­ter maxi taxis to run shut­tles.

Ac­cord­ing to the as­so­ci­a­tion’s pres­i­dent, Bren­ton Knights, on­ly in­di­vid­ual groups of par­ty­go­ers con­tact­ed the as­so­ci­a­tion.

A source close­ly in­volved in the event’s plan­ning be­lieved the event was al­ways des­tined to fail, giv­en the cir­cum­stances.

“Hon­est­ly, the po­lice re­al­ly tried, but it was des­tined to fail. There was no oth­er venue. The on­ly place that could hold a venue of that size, oth­er than Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um, is the Sa­van­nah, and the Sa­van­nah had the Army Fete that night. It would have nev­er worked with those two events there. There was nev­er this prob­lem with the Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um,” the source said.

In March 2023, be­fore a joint se­lect com­mit­tee, the CDA, es­tab­lished by an Act of Par­lia­ment in 1972, de­scribed traf­fic man­age­ment as an on­go­ing process.

Na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty

The host­ing of large-scale Car­ni­val events at the Ch­aguara­mas He­li­port and with­in prox­im­i­ty on the Ch­aguara­mas Penin­su­la, par­tic­u­lar­ly near or bor­der­ing a Coast Guard base, rais­es se­ri­ous na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty con­sid­er­a­tions that can­not and should not be ig­nored, ac­cord­ing to re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert Garvin Heer­ah.

“Mil­i­tary bases, coast guard fa­cil­i­ties, and strate­gic mar­itime as­sets are clas­si­fied as crit­i­cal na­tion­al in­fra­struc­ture. They re­quire con­trolled perime­ters, pre­dictable op­er­a­tional ac­cess, and the abil­i­ty to mo­bilise with­out ob­struc­tion. In­tro­duc­ing thou­sands of pa­trons, mul­ti­ple si­mul­ta­ne­ous events, am­pli­fied en­ter­tain­ment, al­co­hol con­sump­tion, and con­gest­ed traf­fic flows in­to the im­me­di­ate en­vi­ron­ment of such in­stal­la­tions in­creas­es the risk pro­file sig­nif­i­cant­ly,” he said.

He ex­plained that the as­so­ci­at­ed traf­fic con­ges­tion al­so pos­es a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty threat be­cause emer­gency ve­hi­cles can­not move ef­fi­cient­ly, Coast Guard de­ploy­ment could be de­layed, law en­force­ment re­sponse times in­crease, while evac­u­a­tion ca­pac­i­ty is se­vere­ly com­pro­mised.

A 2023 Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee re­port ex­pressed con­cern that the CDA did not have an ef­fi­cient evac­u­a­tion plan.

En­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact

Fol­low­ing the event, work­ers said they spent three days clean­ing up.

“It al­ways has fetes down here. It is long time this hap­pen­ing, maybe they just need to man­age it bet­ter,” a CDA work­er, clean­ing the beach op­po­site 02 Park, said.

In re­sponse to ques­tions, the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty said that, like oth­er large-scale gath­er­ings in eco­log­i­cal­ly rich or coastal ar­eas, fetes and Car­ni­val events in Ch­aguara­mas can have po­ten­tial im­pacts if not prop­er­ly man­aged.

It said in­creased lit­ter and sol­id waste, noise, air and light pol­lu­tion can dis­turb the com­mu­ni­ty and wildlife.

“Ve­hic­u­lar ex­haust from traf­fic and car use can con­tribute to en­vi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion, in­clud­ing neg­a­tive im­pacts on bio­di­ver­si­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly in ar­eas ex­pe­ri­enc­ing high traf­fic vol­umes. Ve­hi­cle emis­sions re­lease pol­lu­tants such as car­bon monox­ide, ni­tro­gen ox­ides, par­tic­u­late mat­ter, and green­house gas­es, which can af­fect air qual­i­ty, hu­man health, and cli­mate change. In a lo­ca­tion like Ch­aguara­mas, which in­cludes coastal, ma­rine, and forest­ed ecosys­tems, pro­longed ex­po­sure to these pol­lu­tants may add stress to sen­si­tive re­cep­tors, in­clud­ing flo­ra and fau­na. The sever­i­ty of the im­pact large­ly de­pends on traf­fic vol­umes and the ef­fec­tive­ness of mea­sures to man­age and mon­i­tor traf­fic and ve­hi­cle emis­sions,” the EMA said, in re­sponse to ques­tions.

Ch­aguara­mas’ 5,900-hectare penin­su­la and sur­round­ing wa­ters are home to 90 species of birds, 17 species of rep­tiles, 11 species of mam­mals, such as the pro­tect­ed ocelot and red howler mon­key, and scores of ma­rine and in­sect species.