Min­is­ter of Cul­ture and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Michelle Ben­jamin has ac­knowl­edged the con­cerns raised by the Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee of Trinidad and To­ba­go (ES­CTT) over gov­ern­ment fund­ing but says re­form of the fes­ti­val is ur­gent­ly need­ed.

Re­spond­ing to re­marks by ES­CTT ex­ec­u­tive chair Za­kiya Uzoma-Wada­da, who de­scribed Eman­ci­pa­tion as “a win for all hu­man­i­ty” and “an on­go­ing jour­ney to­ward [black] iden­ti­ty, jus­tice and trans­for­ma­tion,” Ben­jamin said while the min­istry ac­cepts the con­cerns “with cer­tain reser­va­tions,” the com­mit­tee must recog­nise it is “on­ly one strand in the larg­er fab­ric of the Eman­ci­pa­tion jour­ney.”

In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, Ben­jamin re­mind­ed the ES­CTT that the cur­rent gov­ern­ment in­her­it­ed a $9 bil­lion deficit, which con­tin­ues to af­fect al­lo­ca­tions. She said while the ES­CTT has made de­mands, the com­mit­tee al­so ben­e­fit­ed from sub­stan­tial sup­port un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion.

The state­ment from the min­is­ter said be­tween 2020 and 2024, the ES­CTT re­ceived over $5.7 mil­lion in gov­ern­ment grants and spon­sor­ships. Most re­cent­ly, in 2024, an al­lo­ca­tion of $1.4 mil­lion was made avail­able, though not dis­bursed un­til Jan­u­ary 2025.

In ad­di­tion to fi­nan­cial aid, Ben­jamin said the ES­CTT re­ceived in­fra­struc­tur­al sup­port, in­clud­ing a lease for a prop­er­ty in Mar­aval for its head­quar­ters and ac­cess to agri­cul­tur­al land.

Ahead of this year’s Eman­ci­pa­tion Vil­lage open­ing, Ben­jamin and Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter Sen­a­tor Dar­rell Al­la­har met with ES­CTT of­fi­cials to dis­cuss their con­cerns. In a state­ment, Ben­jamin said de­lays in fund­ing were due to the “fis­cal mis­man­age­ment and pri­ori­ti­sa­tion fail­ures of the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion,” and that the cur­rent gov­ern­ment is work­ing to ad­dress those is­sues be­fore Eman­ci­pa­tion 2026.

But she al­so ques­tioned the com­mit­tee’s ef­fec­tive­ness, say­ing, “My min­istry… has been con­cerned with the man­ner in which the ES­CTT has spent the al­lo­ca­tions re­ceived and its tan­gi­ble re­turns to the pub­lic.”

She point­ed to what she de­scribed as “poor pub­lic turnout” at this year’s Lidj Ya­su Omowale Eman­ci­pa­tion Vil­lage and called for a re­view of how the event is or­gan­ised and mar­ket­ed.

“It is ei­ther that the raised con­scious­ness to which the ex­ec­u­tive chair re­ferred has dropped pre­cip­i­tous­ly or the or­gan­i­sa­tion has not been do­ing enough to bring these de­sir­able re­turns to the pub­lic,” she said.

The state­ment said the min­istry has iden­ti­fied sev­en key ar­eas for ur­gent re­form: repet­i­tive pro­gram­ming, poor mar­ket­ing, ex­clu­sion­ary en­try fees, out­dat­ed plan­ning, lim­it­ed di­as­po­ra col­lab­o­ra­tion, a lack of stake­hold­er in­put, and the need to bet­ter in­cor­po­rate lo­cal Afro­cen­tric con­tent.

“These are not crit­i­cisms for crit­i­cism’s sake,” Ben­jamin said. “They are nec­es­sary truths. We can­not al­low com­pla­cen­cy to hold our cul­ture hostage. The vi­sion must evolve, or it risks fad­ing in­to ir­rel­e­vance.”

She al­so urged cor­po­rate stake­hold­ers and the me­dia to share re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for pre­serv­ing and de­vel­op­ing the fes­ti­val.

“The Gov­ern­ment can­not shoul­der this re­spon­si­bil­i­ty alone,” she said. “It calls for greater col­lab­o­ra­tion across sec­tors to up­lift and sus­tain the lega­cy of Eman­ci­pa­tion.”