Ot­to Car­ring­ton

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Pro­mot­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTPA) is hop­ing the coun­try can host Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions in Feb­ru­ary next year or lat­er in 2022 and is will­ing to as­sist the Gov­ern­ment in the roll­out of vac­cines.

TTPA pres­i­dent Jerome “Rome” Per­cil­la told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that for Car­ni­val to hap­pen, plan­ning must start from now.

He said it all de­pends on the coun­try’s vac­ci­na­tion thrust but not­ed that the fi­nal say will be de­ter­mined by health pro­fes­sion­als at the Min­istry of Health.

“Be­tween six to eight months is need­ed to put on the great­est show on earth...that is what we have to be mind­ful of. The plan­ning process has to be now if you want to have a car­ni­val in Feb­ru­ary. There is al­so the op­tion—if the num­bers are too high—we can have a car­ni­val lat­er down. Again, we can put the plan in place but it is all de­pen­dent on the Min­istry of Health,” Per­cil­la said.

He said most lo­cal artistes have been ful­ly or half vac­ci­nat­ed, as many have left the coun­try in the past few days to at­tend events in var­i­ous ju­ris­dic­tions.

He said it has been a very dif­fi­cult 15 months for many of them, with lim­it­ed sources of in­come, adding that the sec­tor has over 100,000 peo­ple with­in it.

Per­cil­la is proud that many of them ac­cept­ed vac­cines and is al­so en­cour­ag­ing oth­ers to do the same.

“We are ac­tu­al­ly work­ing with the Min­istry of Health on a cam­paign to dri­ve the aware­ness of be­ing vac­ci­nat­ed, be­cause we know that is the on­ly way out of this en­tire thing be­cause we are not go­ing to push for pro­mot­ing events if the pop­u­la­tion isn’t vac­ci­nat­ed,” he stat­ed.

The Min­istry of Tourism Cul­ture and Arts has al­so part­nered with the TTPA to as­sist in the artistes in se­cur­ing trav­el ex­emp­tions when re­turn­ing to Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“We al­so of­fered to the Min­istry of Health that we are here as pro­mot­ers, look­ing to as­sist with lo­gis­tics in terms of the vac­ci­na­tion roll­out plan. We know that they are strug­gling to roll­out and that may not be the ex­per­tise of the Health Min­istry,” Per­cil­la said.

He said his mem­bers are well ex­pe­ri­enced in deal­ing with crowds at large events and this type of as­sis­tance can be ren­dered through the as­so­ci­a­tion.

“There are many op­tions they can use to roll­out the vac­cines. The Gov­ern­ment can use the sys­tem that the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion us­es, where half of the adult pop­u­la­tion is on to vote in one day. I know the vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve is a bit dif­fer­ent but they can al­so use that sys­tem to get the same ex­e­cu­tion,” he said.

He added: “My con­cern is what is go­ing to hap­pen when the coun­try re­ceives the 800,000 dos­es of vac­cine. We stand ready and will­ing to help with the roll­out so it can be done ef­fi­cient­ly and every­one must come to­geth­er. It’s all hands on deck.”