RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Prize mon­ey has been slashed and some Car­ni­val events have been scaled back be­cause of mon­ey woes caused by the eco­nom­ic down­turn, but San Fer­nan­do May­or Ju­nia Re­grel­lo re­mains op­ti­mistic that the re­ces­sion will not kill Car­ni­val.

In­stead, Re­grel­lo be­lieves that cuts would bring back the cre­ativ­i­ty of the past.

In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Re­grel­lo said apart from the can­cel­la­tion of the pre-Di­manche Gras show, Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions is pro­ceed­ing at usu­al in the South city.

He said Kid­dies Car­ni­val will take place to­day and de­spite mon­ey woes, he did not ex­pect a de­cline in par­tic­i­pa­tion. He said the de­ci­sion to re­lo­cate judg­ing for the South King and Queen of Car­ni­val was an ex­am­ple of the Car­ni­val Com­mit­tee think­ing out­side the box.

Re­grel­lo said those peo­ple who had dif­fi­cul­ties in pur­chas­ing ma­te­r­i­al for cos­tumes should al­so be­gin think­ing out­side the box.

"I think it is time for peo­ple to go back to us­ing lo­cal ma­te­ri­als. Find ways of get­ting around the chal­lenges. Use stuff like bam­boo, grass, flow­ers, card­board. Use re­cy­cled stuff," Re­grel­lo said.

Say­ing he was ex­cit­ed to see the cre­ativ­i­ty on dis­play, Re­grel­lo said he did not ex­pect low­er par­tic­i­pa­tion in ac­tiv­i­ties.

"I look for­ward to see how de­sign­ers will pro­duce and what ideas they will come up with. When we pur­chase ma­te­ri­als from abroad it drains our for­eign ex­change and that is why we have to once again use lo­cal ma­te­ri­als," Re­grel­lo said.

He said the de­ci­sion to can­cel the pre-Di­mache Gras show re­sult­ed in sav­ings of over $50,000.

How­ev­er, while mas pro­duc­ers and Car­ni­val en­thu­si­asts sup­port the scal­ing back of Car­ni­val in the city, Re­grel­lo said the San Fer­nan­do busi­ness own­ers have not sup­port­ed the SFCC Car­ni­val events.

Say­ing bars on Cipero Street and Cof­fee Street make mon­ey out of Car­ni­val events, Re­grel­lo said it was dis­heart­en­ing to know that they did not con­tribute fi­nan­cial­ly to the San Fer­nan­do Car­ni­val events.

How­ev­er, busi­ness own­ers said the ad­di­tion­al tax­es they pay to the Gov­ern­ment as well as the eco­nom­ic down­turn had hit their pock­ets hard and they could not con­tribute.

In Jan­u­ary, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert an­nounced a cut by one-third in fi­nan­cial do­na­tions for Car­ni­val events. Chut­ney So­ca Monarch, which re­ceived $1.5 mil­lion last year from the Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board (NL­CB) re­ceived on­ly $1 mil­lion for 2018 and the In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch (ISM) com­pe­ti­tion which re­ceived $2.5 mil­lion re­ceived $1.8 mil­lion. The spe­cial in­ter­est groups, PanTrin­ba­go, the Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO) and the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Bands As­so­ci­a­tion (NC­BA) al­so re­ceived a cut in spon­sor­ship funds. This re­sult­ed in a scale back of ma­jor events as well as re­gion­al Car­ni­val events.