Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young is propos­ing changes for Car­ni­val 2020, in­clud­ing end­ing fes­tiv­i­ties on Car­ni­val Tues­day at 9 pm in­stead of mid­night and ban­ning glass bot­tles.

Gov­ern­ment will be hold­ing talks with­in the next 40 days with stake­hold­ers on the pro­pos­als, Young said at yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net press brief­ing.

“Noth­ing is writ­ten in stone. No de­ci­sion’s been tak­en. We’d want talks with stake­hold­ers. We’re just giv­ing a year’s warn­ing on these two im­por­tant ini­tia­tives we want to have talks on and im­ple­ment for 2020,” Young said.

Act­ing Prime Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert as­sured the ideas were on­ly pro­pos­als and the ul­ti­mate de­ci­sion would have to be made by Cab­i­net.

Young said this year’s Car­ni­val had a much more pos­i­tive at­mos­phere but he said Gov­ern­ment isn’t rest­ing on its lau­rels and is start­ing to plan for 2020 im­me­di­ate­ly.

Young met with se­cu­ri­ty heads to do a post-mortem on Wednes­day and they were man­dat­ed to doc­u­ment ar­eas for im­prove­ment. He said meet­ings will be held right af­ter Lent with stake­hold­ers to plan to make Car­ni­val 2020 even bet­ter. He said he was putting the pop­u­la­tion on no­tice of the two pro­pos­als for 2020 which are:

• Con­clud­ing Car­ni­val Tues­day ac­tiv­i­ties by 9 pm, in­stead of the usu­al mid­night dead­line car­ried in the cur­rent Car­ni­val procla­ma­tion.

• Ban­ning all glass bot­tles on Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day in pub­lic places and at par­ties pri­or to the two days.

On the pro­pos­al to change the Car­ni­val Tues­day end time, Young said while Port-of-Spain Car­ni­val crimes were down to 12 this year com­pared to oth­er years when it was in the 40s, po­lice have been ex­am­in­ing times when there’s a spike in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

“The Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er and I dis­cussed it yes­ter­day and there’s noth­ing to be lost in short­en­ing the Car­ni­val Tues­day procla­ma­tion end time by three hours (from mid­night) to 9 pm. There’s no need - in de­lib­er­a­tions on na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty - for the time to go all the way to mid­night,” Young said.

“So what we float­ed in our dis­cus­sions with se­cu­ri­ty heads on Wednes­day is putting a short­er procla­ma­tion time in. No-one would lose out. The change will pro­vide more safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty and as­sist traf­fic flow. This is on­ly our per­spec­tive from a se­cu­ri­ty point of view.”

Young added that in the pe­ri­od be­tween 9 pm to mid­night a lot of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty takes place.

Im­bert added, “This will be a pro­pos­al from Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty for the Cab­i­net and Cab­i­net will ul­ti­mate­ly de­cide. But it makes sense. I was at Man­dela Park, St James, on Car­ni­val Tues­day when Tribe had an af­ter-par­ty. This end­ed just past 8 pm. Al­so, if you play mas, the num­ber of ‘storm­ers’ in­creas­es in bands af­ter 5.30/6 pm. Un­cos­tumed peo­ple en­ter the band and take over.”

Young said oth­er states, in­clud­ing Brazil, didn’t have ex­tend­ed Car­ni­val pe­ri­ods all the way to mid­night.

“When the time for J’Ou­vert was changed, mak­ing it clos­er to sun­rise, that small change made a big dif­fer­ence in Car­ni­val safe­ty, mak­ing it a lot eas­i­er to po­lice from the se­cu­ri­ty per­spec­tive,” Young said.

On the planned glass bot­tle ban, Young said on Car­ni­val Tues­day po­lice de­cid­ed to halt the mu­sic on Ari­api­ta Av­enue af­ter re­ceiv­ing word that crim­i­nal el­e­ments want­ed to pelt glass bot­tles which had ac­cu­mu­lat­ed. He said it had been very dark and dif­fi­cult to ap­pre­hend them. He said he’d had dis­cus­sions on glass bot­tle prob­lems pri­or to Car­ni­val but the ban de­ci­sion wasn’t tak­en.

“But I’m putting the pop­u­la­tion on alert I in­tend to ban glass bot­tles next year,” he said.

On whether al­co­hol man­u­fac­tur­ers will have to make sig­nif­i­cant ad­just­ment, Young said, “That’s why we’re start­ing now, we’ll have a whole year to plan. Hard liquor in bot­tles can be con­trolled. Even in cool­er fetes you’re not al­lowed to bring glass bot­tles, I’ve seen peo­ple put it in ‘Jaliter’ (soft drink) bot­tles. So the is­sue re­al­ly comes down to beer bot­tles. We’ll en­gage those who man­u­fac­ture beers to see if they can in­crease pack­ag­ing in cans.”

Young con­firmed the step will re­quire law.