Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The Min­istry of Cul­ture and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment has re­vealed that a to­tal of $16.1 mil­lion was spent to es­tab­lish and op­er­ate the Fla­va Vil­lage ini­tia­tive dur­ing Car­ni­val 2026.

The in­for­ma­tion was pro­vid­ed fol­low­ing a ques­tion by Op­po­si­tion PNM Sen­a­tor Janelle John-Bates in Feb­ru­ary. The writ­ten re­ply from Min­is­ter of Cul­ture and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Michelle Ben­jamin was cir­cu­lat­ed dur­ing yes­ter­day’s Sen­ate sit­ting.

Fla­va Vil­lage was an ad­mis­sion-free cul­tur­al and culi­nary event held at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain. Run­ning from Jan­u­ary to Feb­ru­ary, the ini­tia­tive fea­tured lo­cal cui­sine from food ven­dors and live per­for­mances by lead­ing so­ca artistes, draw­ing large crowds over the Car­ni­val sea­son.

Sen­a­tor John-Bates had asked for the to­tal cost of es­tab­lish­ing and op­er­at­ing the ini­tia­tive. The min­istry’s re­ply de­tailed the ex­pen­di­tures as fol­lows:

Short-Term Em­ploy­ment: $172,000.00

Oth­er Con­tract­ed Ser­vices: $13,500,000.00

Se­cu­ri­ty: $725,163.75

Con­struc­tion of Fa­cil­i­ties: $283,000.00

Pro­mo­tions, Pub­lic­i­ty, and Print­ing: $1,484,500.00

To­tal: $16,164,663.75

The min­istry al­so stat­ed that, in ac­cor­dance with the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty (Pro­cure­ment Meth­ods and Pro­ce­dures) Reg­u­la­tions 2021, the fol­low­ing pro­cure­ment meth­ods were em­ployed:

Lim­it­ed Bid­ding

Sin­gle Source Se­lec­tion

Re­quest for Pro­pos­al with Di­a­logue

Each method was ap­plied based on the na­ture and val­ue of the con­tract or ser­vice, as pre­scribed by the reg­u­la­tions.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the cri­te­ria and eval­u­a­tion method­ol­o­gy for award­ing con­tracts un­der Fla­va Vil­lage in­clud­ed price, qual­i­ty, de­liv­ery speed, tech­ni­cal mer­it and sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

“These cri­te­ria were ap­plied in a man­ner con­sis­tent with the prin­ci­ples of trans­paren­cy, val­ue for mon­ey, and fair­ness, as pre­scribed un­der the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act,” the min­istry added.