Kei­th An­der­son

Some $1.5 mil­lion will be paid to pan­men this week.Pan Trin­ba­go has been at the cen­tre of con­tro­ver­sy fol­low­ing the fail­ure of pay­ment of stipends to pan­men for the 2011 Panora­ma sea­son.How­ev­er, the T&T Guardian learnt a num­ber of is­sues con­tributed to the de­lay.Of­fi­cials said poor or­gan­i­sa­tion and reg­is­tra­tion er­rors are among the fac­tors to be blamed for the late pay­out."It was not Pan Trin­ba­go's fault as the or­gan­i­sa­tion was wait­ing on funds to pay pan­men. In ad­di­tion, some steel bands were too delin­quent in send­ing in their reg­is­tra­tion forms,"an of­fi­cial re­vealed.The pan­men have been up in arms over the non-pay­ment of the $1,000 stipend.The con­tentious is­sue saw Pan Trin­ba­go and the Min­is­ter of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Win­ston Gyp­sy Pe­ters lock­ing horns dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son as a de­ci­sion was tak­en to re­duce the pay­ment from $1,000 to $800.

Pan­men had threat­ened to boy­cott the event.How­ev­er, a de­ci­sion was tak­en by Pan Trin­ba­go to com­pen­sate the pan­men for the short­fall.More than 7,000 pan­men are ex­pect­ed to re­ceive their stipends on Fri­day.Mean­while, a row has bro­ken out be­tween 2011 Panora­ma cham­pi­ons Neal and Massy Trinidad All Stars and Pan Trin­ba­go over the ten per cent de­duct­ed from the band's $2 mil­lion first prize.All Stars is claim­ing that the steel­band body should not touch the mon­ey as it was a spe­cial prize giv­en by the gov­ern­ment.Le­gal fire­works are ex­pect­ed.