KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

De­spite the an­nu­al grap­pling for funds with the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC), San Fer­nan­do May­or Ju­nia Re­grel­lo says the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and band­lead­ers made this year’s cel­e­bra­tion pos­si­ble in the south­ern city.

Re­grel­lo told jour­nal­ists that the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion is yet to get cor­re­spon­dence from the NCC as to how much fund­ing will be al­lo­cat­ed. Speak­ing at the High Street judg­ing point Mon­day, he said the J’Ou­vert cel­e­bra­tions still turned out suc­cess­ful.

“We are yet to get an in­di­ca­tion from NCC what our al­lo­ca­tion is. I must com­mend the band­lead­ers, the mas­quer­aders, the South­ern Busi­ness Cham­ber of Com­merce for help­ing us to put to­geth­er the am­bi­ence and at­mos­phere,” Re­grel­lo said.

This year saw the judg­ing point re­turn to High Street, which has been the sub­ject of com­plaints over the year. It is some­times dif­fi­cult for Kings and Queens of bands and those who car­ry heavy struc­tures to as­cend the hill. How­ev­er, the J’Ou­vert went along smooth­ly.

Re­grel­lo said the change this year was be­ing en­joyed by all and was done to ease the noise nui­sance for pa­tients at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. Last year, the judg­ing point was lo­cat­ed on Har­ris Prom­e­nade, a short dis­tance away from the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal and the San Fer­nan­do Teach­ing Hos­pi­tal.

This year bands were in­struct­ed to switch off their mu­sic from In­de­pen­dence Av­enue to Chancery Lane so that pa­tients at the hos­pi­tal would not be af­fect­ed.
“So far I can say we can see some suc­cess in terms of spread­ing out the Car­ni­val as op­posed to what we had last year, which was con­densed in one par­tic­u­lar area. As you will be aware, there are is­sues with the hos­pi­tal, with the pa­tients be­ing dis­turbed and those who had surgery. We at­tempt­ed to shift the fo­cus from Har­ris Prom­e­nade to High Street. Bands were asked to turn down their mu­sic on In­de­pen­dence Av­enue un­til they get to the point of the Guardian build­ing.

“That is be­ing ad­hered to and the shift is on to High Street, where most of the com­pe­ti­tion used to be in years gone by. Bleach­ers have been pro­vid­ed for the spec­ta­tors and I think we can grow and just im­prove and get bet­ter as time goes on.”