KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

With just $700,000 in State fund­ing to stage Car­ni­val in the south­ern city, the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion is tight­en­ing its belt, scal­ing back cel­e­bra­tions and can­celling the for­mal launch this year.

San Fer­nan­do May­or Robert Par­ris told Guardian Me­dia that while spend­ing is be­ing reined in, ef­forts are un­der­way to pre­serve the over­all qual­i­ty of the fes­ti­val.

“There will be no launch,” Par­ris said, ex­plain­ing that the com­mit­tee has tak­en guid­ance from the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) and ac­cept­ed that a launch is un­ten­able with­out the nec­es­sary fund­ing.

De­spite the cut­backs, Par­ris said the Car­ni­val prod­uct it­self would not be com­pro­mised. In­stead, the com­mit­tee is adopt­ing a more fru­gal ap­proach, re­ly­ing on rea­son­able and re­li­able goods and ser­vice sup­pli­ers it has suc­cess­ful­ly used for oth­er events.

One of the more sig­nif­i­cant cost-sav­ing mea­sures un­der con­sid­er­a­tion is the re­lo­ca­tion of the main judg­ing point. The com­mit­tee is look­ing to move it from the South Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (SAPA) to the Cipero Street/Cof­fee Street in­ter­sec­tion, elim­i­nat­ing rental ex­pens­es. Todd Street was ini­tial­ly con­sid­ered, but the Po­lice Ser­vice ad­vised against that op­tion, prompt­ing the search for al­ter­na­tive lo­ca­tions.

The route for the Pa­rade of the Bands com­pe­ti­tion on Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day will re­main un­changed. How­ev­er, ad­just­ments are be­ing made for Kid­dies Car­ni­val. Par­ris ex­plained that the NCC has de­cid­ed to re­move its stage at Skin­ner Park fol­low­ing the Chut­ney So­ca Monarch fi­nals on Feb­ru­ary 8.

“There will be no stage in Skin­ner Park af­ter that,” he said, not­ing that the route will be ad­just­ed so that the Har­ris Prom­e­nade band­stand be­comes the judg­ing point. The same arrange­ment will ap­ply for Mon­day Night Mas.

Par­ris said the Car­ni­val Com­mit­tee had tak­en a de­lib­er­ate de­ci­sion to avoid ex­trav­a­gant spend­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly as it has not re­ceived any sub­ven­tion from the NCC be­yond the al­lo­ca­tion al­ready con­firmed.

They were in­formed that the fund­ing would re­main the same as in 2025, for which the com­mit­tee is grate­ful. How­ev­er, he ac­knowl­edged that the amount is in­suf­fi­cient to com­fort­ably host the cel­e­bra­tion, re­sult­ing in the dif­fi­cult de­ci­sion to slash prizes.

Par­ris, how­ev­er, stressed that prize mon­ey, while im­por­tant, is ul­ti­mate­ly a ges­ture of ap­pre­ci­a­tion rather than the pri­ma­ry source of in­come for band­lead­ers. He said band­lead­ers typ­i­cal­ly earn from rev­ellers play­ing with their bands, sup­port­ed by spon­sor­ship and ad­ver­tis­ing.

“If they are good busi­ness peo­ple, the rev­enues earned from ad­ver­tis­ing their bands and hav­ing their rev­ellers play with them should ex­ceed the amount of mon­ey that we would have in prize earn­ings. The prize earn­ings that we would give could nev­er suf­fice the amount of mon­ey they would have in­vest­ed and or got­ten back in rev­enues earned if they were able to man­age their af­fairs prop­er­ly,” he added.

“What we have de­cid­ed is that we are look­ing at al­ter­na­tive, cost-ef­fec­tive ways to man­age the Car­ni­val. For in­stance, we are look­ing for an area, per­haps, to put the main judg­ing point stage be­cause in the past, we have had to pay SAPA to rent the area in which the in­fra­struc­ture is placed. We are try­ing to work with­in our means to try to stretch what­ev­er we can to cer­tain­ly make a bet­ter prod­uct of the Car­ni­val mov­ing for­ward.”

They are al­so seek­ing spon­sor­ship op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Par­ris said the com­mit­tee has met with key stake­hold­ers and will re-en­gage them, ac­knowl­edg­ing co­op­er­a­tion and that this year’s Car­ni­val will be dif­fer­ent.

Par­ris said any funds re­main­ing af­ter Car­ni­val must be di­rect­ed to­wards set­tling out­stand­ing debts to sup­pli­ers and bands.