Based on the size of their an­nu­al sub­ven­tions, the Car­ni­val in­ter­est groups are the equiv­a­lent of medi­um-sized busi­ness­es and should be con­sis­tent­ly con­tribut­ing con­sid­er­able val­ue to this coun­try's Car­ni­val in­dus­try. How­ev­er, re­cent foren­sic au­dits in­to two in­ter­est groups—Pan Trin­ba­go and the Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans' Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO)—re­veal wor­ry­ing lev­els of mis­man­age­ment and a lack of trans­paren­cy.

To­day's in-depth re­port on the dis­mal fi­nan­cial state of TU­CO would not come as a com­plete sur­prise to the ca­lyp­so fra­ter­ni­ty. The or­gan­i­sa­tion's chron­ic state of in­debt­ed­ness has been pub­lic knowl­edge for years. What the clin­i­cal ex­am­i­na­tion of the ca­lyp­so body by au­di­tors Ernst and Young (EY) has re­vealed is an op­er­at­ing sys­tem which fa­cil­i­tates large scale leak­age of state funds.

Par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­turb­ing is the lack of ac­count­abil­i­ty from TU­CO's ex­ec­u­tive in the face of high lev­els of ex­pen­di­ture that are not con­tribut­ing to the ad­vance­ment of the art form, or the wel­fare of ca­lyp­so­ni­ans and oth­er stake­hold­ers.

With just a month to go to Car­ni­val 2020, there might not be time to ad­dress the many is­sues ex­posed by the EY au­dit. How­ev­er, it can no longer be busi­ness as usu­al for TU­CO and the oth­er in­ter­est groups, not when tax­pay­ers' mon­ey is in­volved.

The cur­rent arrange­ment with the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) and the three in­ter­est groups does not work. All are in debt, in­clud­ing the NCC, and none have gen­er­at­ed the lev­el of rev­enue or dis­played the in­no­va­tion and pro­fes­sion­al­ism of pri­vate sec­tor en­ti­ties that have been rev­o­lu­tion­is­ing the fes­ti­val in re­cent years.

A re­view of the leg­isla­tive frame­work un­der which NCC and the in­ter­est groups OP­ER­ATE seems over­due at this stage. Al­so, the au­dit find­ings de­mand fur­ther ac­tion, not on­ly to stop the haem­or­rhage of funds but en­sure those re­spon­si­ble are held ac­count­able.

So far, Cul­ture Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly has been very silent on the au­dits and their find­ings. How­ev­er, suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence is now in her hands to war­rant cor­rec­tive ac­tion for what has been, at the very least, wan­ton mis­han­dling of mil­lions of tax­pay­ers dol­lars.

The prob­lem with the in­ter­est groups is that their ex­ec­u­tives are pop­u­lat­ed with of­fi­cers drawn from the art form who may not nec­es­sar­i­ly have the skills and pro­fes­sion­al train­ing to man­age mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar en­ter­pris­es. An op­er­at­ing mod­el is need­ed that will en­sure the ac­tiv­i­ties of these elect­ed in­di­vid­u­als are backed up by ad­min­is­tra­tive staff in var­i­ous dis­ci­plines, in­clud­ing man­age­r­i­al, ac­count­ing and oth­er pro­fes­sion­als.

It should al­so be the case that these en­ti­ties re­main ful­ly func­tion­al year-round, pro­duc­ing shows pro­mot­ing the cul­ture, in ways that will gen­er­ate rev­enue and con­tribute to the on­go­ing de­vel­op­ment of the Car­ni­val in­dus­try and not be de­pen­dent an­nu­al­ly on state funds.

It is time to clean up the mess, pow­er down the debts and get down to the se­ri­ous busi­ness of ce­ment­ing T&T's glob­al rank­ing as the Mec­ca of Car­ni­val. It must start by dis­pens­ing with these old fail­ing sys­tems of waste and mis­man­age­ment.