The Karuk­era One Love Fes­ti­val, which saw a stage be­ing con­struct­ed in the wa­ters of Mara­cas Bay, will go on as planned, de­spite pub­lic con­cern.

The or­gan­is­ers of the event Karuk­era One Love, which orig­i­nat­ed in Guade­loupe, said yes­ter­day all ap­provals were grant­ed for the event.

The event has been billed as a fete in the wa­ters of Mara­cas Beach on Car­ni­val Fri­day.

The in­stal­la­tion of the stage im­me­di­ate­ly raised a wave of con­cern about the safe­ty of pa­trons. UDe­COTT which man­ages the Mara­cas Beach fa­cil­i­ty went on record to say that it was halt­ing the con­struc­tion be­cause all ap­provals were not grant­ed.

But yes­ter­day the or­gan­is­ers said every­thing is in place for the event.

“The Karuk­era One Love (KOL) or­ga­ni­za­tion has ac­quired all nec­es­sary doc­u­ment­ed per­mis­sions from the ap­pro­pri­ate lo­cal state agen­cies and oth­er stake­hold­er bod­ies in Trinidad and To­ba­go. We are an or­ga­ni­za­tion that will al­ways abide by all laws in the re­spec­tive ter­ror­i­ties that we work.”

Guardian Me­dia was told that the per­mis­sions came from the Fire Ser­vice, the Po­lice Ser­vice, life­guards, the Com­mis­sion­er of State lands and UDe­COTT.

The or­ga­ni­za­tion added, “there is a thor­ough in­spec­tion process for all KOL in­fra­struc­ture...all nec­es­sary ver­i­fi­ca­tions and metic­u­lous checks are done to en­sure max­i­mum safe­ty for all.”

But the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs said it was not con­sult­ed con­cern­ing next week’s Karuk­era One Love Fes­ti­val.

When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day the IMA said while they were not a reg­u­la­to­ry body that could grant or de­ny ap­proval for events, they would be con­sult­ed by the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty con­cern­ing events that take place at sea.

The IMA con­firmed that they were not con­tact­ed by the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty con­cern­ing the event.

It is stan­dard prac­tice that all ma­jor Car­ni­val events or con­certs seek ap­proval from the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty be­fore an event is held.

In many cas­es, the EMA will post pub­lic no­tices about the event, par­tic­u­lar­ly those held in res­i­den­tial ar­eas, ask­ing if any stake­hold­ers raised any ob­jec­tion to the event be­ing held at a spe­cif­ic lo­ca­tion.

The EMA al­so has the au­thor­i­ty to shut down on­go­ing events, if they are found in breach of the agree­ments list­ed in the event’s ap­proval.

This is usu­al­ly en­forced for noise pol­lu­tion vi­o­la­tions, which has seen sev­er­al Car­ni­val fetes over the years stopped abrupt­ly or or­gan­is­ers man­dat­ed to shut off por­tions of their sound sys­tem to al­low the event to con­tin­ue at the pre­scribed deci­bel lev­el agreed.

When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Man­ag­er of the EMA Wen­dell Con­stan­tine con­firmed an ap­pli­ca­tion for the event was made to the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA), but the ap­pli­ca­tion sub­mit­ted was con­cern­ing “Noise Vari­a­tion.”

In an emailed re­sponse Con­stan­tine ex­plained, “A Noise Vari­a­tion is a per­mit that al­lows a de­vi­a­tion from the pre­scribed stan­dards of the Noise Pol­lu­tion Con­trol Rules (NPCR), but al­so lim­its the lev­el of sound that can be emit­ted and stip­u­lates oth­er sound abate­ment mea­sures.”

The state­ment added, “On re­ceipt of the ap­pli­ca­tion, the ap­pli­cant was re­quest­ed to con­firm the ex­act lo­ca­tion of the event on Mara­cas beach and where the speak­ers would be placed. The ap­pli­cant pro­vid­ed a site map and the ap­pli­ca­tion was processed based on the in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed to the EMA.”