Kevon Mc Ken­na

The first half of the 20th cen­tu­ry saw the po­liovirus strike Trinidad and To­ba­go with­out warn­ing. Po­lio is a dis­abling and life-threat­en­ing dis­ease that spreads from per­son to per­son and can in­fect the spinal cord, caus­ing paral­y­sis.

In Jan­u­ary 1972, there were 205

cas­es and 12 deaths as a re­sult of the po­lio epi­dem­ic in T&T. The pub­lic health­care sys­tem in To­ba­go in the 1970s was lit­tle more than a skele­tal frame­work of to­day’s and with very few tools, in­clu­sive of man­pow­er, to man­age in­fec­tious dis­eases and virus­es like po­lio.

For­mer coun­ty med­ical of­fi­cer in To­ba­go Dr Lancelot Austin notes that the sys­tem then was very ba­sic and com­mu­ni­ty sur­veil­lance for in­fec­tious dis­ease was min­i­mal. Dr Sandeep Ku­mar, now a pri­vate prac­ti­tion­er, al­so says most med­ical work was done by a gen­er­al sur­geon as there were no oth­er spe­cial­ists work­ing on the is­land then. The then gov­ern­ment, as a con­se­quence of the po­lio epi­dem­ic, de­cid­ed to post­pone our Car­ni­val by three months to mit­i­gate against spread.

Four decades lat­er and at the be­gin­ning of plan­ning for next year’s cel­e­bra­tion, the stage of the great­est show on earth finds it­self deal­ing with a pan­dem­ic— COVID-19.

COVID-19 is part of the fam­i­ly of virus­es that in­clude the com­mon cold, SARS and MERS and is spread from per­son to per­son or from touch­ing con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed ar­eas. As of May 21, T&T saw 116 pos­i­tive cas­es and eight deaths and from that num­ber, To­ba­go record­ed five pos­i­tive cas­es and, one death. With a high­er mor­tal­i­ty rate than the po­liovirus of 1972, sim­i­lar con­cerns arose with COVID-19 and the need for mit­i­ga­tion is more ev­i­dent.

One of the prin­ci­pal meth­ods of mit­i­ga­tion in­cludes phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing. In re­sponse to COVID-19, coun­tries closed bor­ders and sig­nif­i­cant stay-at-home mea­sures have brought man­u­fac­tur­ing, sport­ing and leisure ac­tiv­i­ties to a halt glob­al­ly. In light of these de­vel­op­ments, Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion chair­man Win­ston “Gyp­sy” Pe­ters says the de­ci­sion on whether there will be Car­ni­val in 2021 will be made in Au­gust.

For­tu­nate­ly, af­ter com­pli­ance with the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion’s pro­to­cols, T&T has been able to flat­ten the curve.

In light of this da­ta, a rea­son­able ar­gu­ment can be ad­vanced that there is no rea­son to can­cel Car­ni­val 2021, par­tic­u­lar­ly if the Min­istry of Health, Min­istry of Tourism and Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment work in tan­dem with the pri­vate sec­tor to es­tab­lish and en­force prop­er health pro­to­cols.

For sev­er­al stake­hold­ers, Car­ni­val is a high rev­enue earn­er and sus­tains hun­dreds of jobs through­out the year. The Gov­ern­ment’s in­vest­ment in Car­ni­val is al­so piv­otal in de­mand cre­ation for all the oth­er ser­vices and com­modi­ties utilised by the var­i­ous afore­men­tioned sec­tors.

Gov­ern­ment al­so gen­er­ates sig­nif­i­cant rev­enue through the ex­er­cise through tax­es and fees for a range of ser­vices con­nect­ed to var­i­ous ac­tiv­i­ties and the coun­try earns for­eign ex­change over­all.

While the risks of mor­tal­i­ty and mor­bid­i­ty re­lat­ed to COVID-19 and the ad­di­tion­al bur­den placed on the health­care sys­tem of T&T are clear, a bal­ance must be struck be­tween pro­ject­ed mor­tal­i­ty and mor­bid­i­ty and a loss in rev­enue col­lec­tion, low­er em­ploy­ment lev­els, re­duced sec­to­r­i­al de­vel­op­ment and cul­tur­al en­rich­ment.

In this mi­lieu, where is To­ba­go?

From Jan­u­ary 26 to Feb 13, 2018, the to­tal vis­i­tor ar­rival to To­ba­go was 1,996 with an ex­pen­di­ture of $9,388 per per­son and to­tal rev­enue of $18,738.44. With the bor­ders closed, the Trinidad cus­tomer-base may be the sav­ing grace for To­ba­go and its tourism sec­tor. To­ba­go must find nov­el ways and re­cal­i­brate its think­ing to cap­ture this do­mes­tic mar­ket.

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly re­cent­ly cre­at­ed the Fes­ti­val Com­mis­sion to man­age all fes­ti­vals and ap­point­ed for­mer Sec­re­tary of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Dr Denise Tsoiafatt-An­gus chair­man of the board. In a re­cent­ly con­duct­ed sur­vey on the so­cio-eco­nom­ic fac­tors that could in­flu­ence host­ing a Car­ni­val in To­ba­go, more than 80 per cent of re­spon­dents in­di­cat­ed that To­ba­go should have its own Car­ni­val and they were dis­sat­is­fied with the present for­mat of To­ba­go’s car­ni­val. The cur­rent cri­sis may be an ex­cel­lent time to look se­ri­ous­ly at:

1. To­ba­go stag­ing its own Car­ni­val sep­a­rate and apart from Trinidad Car­ni­val;

2. Invit­ing stake­hold­ers to dis­cuss views to de­vel­op and im­ple­ment a strate­gic plan for all fes­ti­vals in To­ba­go;

3. Chang­ing team mem­bers to al­low cre­atives, youth, qual­i­fied and ex­pe­ri­enced per­sons a seat at the ta­ble to de­vel­op a re­spon­sive fes­ti­val prod­uct;

4. De­vel­op­ing a mod­ern mar­ket­ing plan for clear­ly de­fined tar­get mar­kets, with vis­i­tor pro­files and well-de­fined ad­ver­tis­ing and pro­mo­tion­al strate­gies and sys­tems for mon­i­tor­ing and eval­u­at­ing in a bid to en­able da­ta-dri­ven and com­pet­i­tive prac­tices.

To­ba­go can at this mo­ment be­gin its eco­nom­ic and en­ter­tain­ment de­cou­pling from Trinidad, which in re­turn will sat­is­fy the dig­ni­ty and self-de­ter­mi­na­tion of its peo­ple.