Bavi­ta Gopaulchan and Rhon­dor Dowlat-Ros­tant

So­ca artiste Nes­ta ‘Sekon Sta’ Box­hill in­sists that all pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions were fol­lowed in the host­ing of the vir­tu­al Sekon Sun­day, fol­low­ing word from Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith that an in­ves­ti­ga­tion will be launched in­to his Queen’s Hall con­cert Sun­day.

Videos of the event, which are now at the cen­tre of a po­lice probe, have been cir­cu­lat­ing on­line, caus­ing many, in­clud­ing Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts Ran­dall Mitchell, to ex­press con­cern about whether at­ten­dees breached the COVID-19 reg­u­la­tions.

In the video some peo­ple were seen danc­ing, oth­ers were jump­ing and wav­ing while singing along to the artistes on stage.

Grif­fith said yes­ter­day that as far as he is con­cerned the event was a “pub­lic par­ty”.

How­ev­er, Sekon Sta in­sist­ed while there was “a lot of vibes” at Queens Hall that night, it was far from a fete or pub­lic par­ty.

“I think the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er will like peo­ple to in­ves­ti­gate the use of pub­lic spaces but this was not a par­ty. There were no tick­ets sold for this event. It was ‘in­vites on­ly’ and what was not shown is the be­hind the scenes.”

Re­spond­ing to the videos he said, “You have to un­der­stand the peo­ple who were seen to­geth­er came to­geth­er but what was learnt is that for op­tics and se­cu­ri­ty rea­sons let’s not put peo­ple in the front seat be­cause that is where any kind of reg­u­la­tion was bro­ken. If you look at the ac­tu­al video they were im­me­di­ate­ly seat­ed”.

He as­sured that both his crew and the team at the venue were very “metic­u­lous” about the move­ment of at­ten­dees.

“There were lim­i­ta­tions to the amount of peo­ple al­lowed back­stage. Both Queen’s Hall and us agreed to what is in the Pub­lic Or­di­nance and we went with 200 peo­ple out of the 800 even though they are al­lowed to have 50 per cent,” he said.

He added, “Every­body wore masks for the en­tire­ty of the event and you could check the video footage. Con­tact trac­ing forms were used when per­sons en­tered the venue so that we have full con­tact trac­ing. Seat­ings were spaced and per­sons sat with who they came with”.

He al­so in­di­cat­ed that there were peo­ple as­signed to clean and sani­tise sur­faces dur­ing the event.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts Ran­dall Mitchell said he has re­quest­ed an im­me­di­ate meet­ing with the board and man­age­ment of all na­tion­al spaces un­der the min­istry to “re­vise the op­er­a­tions of these per­for­mance spaces”.

The so­ca artiste hopes the Sekon Sun­day event will be used as a tem­plate to bet­ter plan fu­ture events rather than block oth­ers from hap­pen­ing as he not­ed the in­dus­try is al­ready suf­fer­ing be­cause of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Grif­fith said from what he saw, the event ap­peared to have breached the reg­u­la­tions.

“The TTPS (Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice) will launch an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to this event,” Grif­fith said.

He not­ed that while the event was car­ried on tele­vi­sion and on so­cial me­dia plat­forms, the video footage was quite clear in that “it showed nu­mer­ous pa­trons in­side Queen’s Hall danc­ing to the mu­sic of sev­er­al artistes.”

“The law was quite clear and there must be a lev­el play­ing field for all,” Grif­fith said.

The Com­mis­sion­er said he was in­formed that sim­i­lar events like the one which took place at Queen’s Hall on Sun­day, are be­ing planned and be­ing ad­ver­tised on so­cial me­dia.

He added that pro­mot­ers, in the ab­sence of Car­ni­val 2021, are try­ing to be nov­el by or­gan­is­ing events in pub­lic spaces with all the in­gre­di­ents of a par­ty or in some cas­es, a band launch­ing.

When con­tact­ed for com­ment on Grif­fith’s state­ments and the launch of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to Sun­day’s event, Tourism, Cul­ture and Arts Min­is­ter, Ran­dall Mitchell dis­closed that Sekon Sun­day was record­ed to be broad­cast and gave the as­sur­ance to the pub­lic of the Min­istry’s com­mit­ment to Pub­lic Health Guide­lines and Pro­to­cols to pre­vent the spread of COVID-19.

Mitchell con­firmed in­vi­ta­tions were is­sued to ap­prox­i­mate­ly 200 per­sons which is 30 per cent, well un­der the 50 per cent ca­pac­i­ty al­lowed by Queen’s Hall COVID-19 guide­lines for the host­ing of events at its venue.

He said all in­vi­tees were sub­ject­ed to the pro­to­cols out­lined, among oth­ers, which are in place at Queen’s Hall:

• Ad­her­ence to phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing

• Pro­vi­sion of name, ad­dress, phone con­tact and email ad­dress to al­low for con­tact trac­ing

• Tem­per­a­ture check and symp­tom screen­ing

• Sani­ti­sa­tion of hands up­on en­try us­ing sinks for san­i­tiz­ers

• Wear­ing of masks which must be kept on dur­ing the per­for­mance/ac­tiv­i­ty

How­ev­er, Mitchell ad­mit­ted that he is con­cerned over what he saw in the videos.

“I share the con­cern of the Com­mis­sion­er. I’ve sum­moned a meet­ing of the chair­men and man­agers of these per­form­ing spaces and I have ex­tend­ed an in­vi­ta­tion to the Com­mis­sion­er to at­tend should he deem it fit,” Mitchell said.