Mi­cal Te­ja’s DNA dom­i­nat­ed the To­ba­go Car­ni­val Pa­rade of the Bands in Scar­bor­ough.

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly nine bands par­tic­i­pat­ed in To­ba­go’s Car­ni­val Tues­day cel­e­bra­tions, in­clud­ing medi­um and large bands As­tra Win­ches­ter Cre­ations, Lind­ley Melville, and Mar­cline Nedd and As­so­ciates por­tray­ing Car­ni­val is Colours.

Al­though the is­land’s Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions were sig­nif­i­cant­ly small­er this year when com­pared to late year, scores of mas­quer­aders rev­elled through the streets of Scar­bor­ough

Just days ago the is­land’s cap­i­tal was af­fect­ed se­vere­ly by an oil spill spew­ing from an uniden­ti­fied sunken ves­sel just off the coast of Cove last Wednes­day.

How­ev­er, yes­ter­day the oil de­po­si­tion along the shore­line and on the main road was cleaned up and the strong fumes were sub­tle.

To fa­cil­i­tate clean up ef­forts and for health and safe­ty rea­sons the To­ba­go Fes­ti­vals Com­mis­sion Lim­it­ed an­nounced a new route, hours be­fore Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions in Scar­bor­ough on Mon­day and Tues­day.

Judg­ing points were set up at Mar­ket Square and the Old Botan­ic Gar­den along the Claude Noel High­way.

The com­mis­sion said the new route aimed to en­hance the Car­ni­val ex­pe­ri­ence for both par­tic­i­pants and spec­ta­tors.

Al­though there was a late start to the pa­rade, the bands even­tu­al­ly came in­to sight just af­ter 3 pm.

One ven­dor Col­in Graves said the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly should do away with Feb­ru­ary Na­tion­al Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions.

He said, “You don’t re­alise no ven­dors re­al­ly come out for this. It was a buss from the start and a waste to tax­pay­ers mon­ey. Oc­to­ber look­ing like a bet­ter time for To­ba­go be­cause the fo­cus would be on us. We have to think smart and eco­nom­i­cal.”

An­oth­er spec­ta­tor who didn’t want to be named said she felt the THA de­lib­er­ate­ly sab­o­taged the Car­ni­val.

“If bands has got­ten the sup­port they need­ed from the THA then we over here, who like Car­ni­val in Feb­ru­ary and still want to have our own lit­tle cel­e­bra­tion would get some­thing prop­er for us and our chil­dren to en­joy,” she said.

De­spite this, the pa­rade con­tin­ued in­to the evening as the crowd grew larg­er and a hand­ful of vis­i­tors from the UK, Ger­many and US en­joyed what To­ba­go had to of­fer.

Mean­while, the po­lice deemed Car­ni­val one of the safest cel­e­bra­tions. Snr Supt Roh Hill Kirk said the pa­rade was in­ci­dent free.