JANELLE BERNARD

Head of the To­ba­go Busi­ness Cham­ber, Mar­tin George, strong­ly be­lieves Gov­ern­ment should for­get about stag­ing any kind of Car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ty for 2022, es­pe­cial­ly for To­ba­go.

“The time frame left for plan­ning and putting on any sem­blance of a car­ni­val 2022 is in­suf­fi­cient and there­fore, safe zone or not, car­ni­val 2022 should not be a ma­jor con­sid­er­a­tion for Trinidad and To­ba­go, but more so To­ba­go,” George ar­gues.

Ac­cord­ing to George, not enough thought has gone in­to the plan­ning of any of the events be­ing pro­posed at present.

“It does not ap­pear re­al­is­tic or fea­si­ble to push ahead with this half-baked duck of an idea to have a safe zone car­ni­val at this point, par­tic­u­lar­ly in To­ba­go,” he said.

“Even at the best of times—even with no pan­dem­ic—where you have the full gamut of Car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ties, Car­ni­val in To­ba­go is usu­al­ly very slow com­pared to Trinidad,” he points out.

The To­ba­go Busi­ness Cham­ber boss main­tains To­ba­go should fo­cus its ef­forts on what it is known for and good at and should look at this time as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to do a ma­jor re­set.  

He rec­om­mends that should the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly choose to re­tain To­ba­go Car­ni­val, then they should con­sid­er host­ing it at a dif­fer­ent time of year.

“Have your Car­ni­val in To­ba­go in the month of Sep­tem­ber, which is a tra­di­tion­al­ly slow pe­ri­od,” he pro­pos­es.  

As far as he is con­cerned, To­ba­go should not be com­pet­ing with Trinidad Car­ni­val, try­ing to of­fer a sim­i­lar fes­ti­val buf­fet.  He ar­gues that To­ba­go Car­ni­val should be scrapped al­to­geth­er.

"To­ba­go needs to un­der­stand the prod­uct it has.  Dur­ing Trinidad's Car­ni­val, To­ba­go is the al­ter­na­tive... the es­cape from Trinidad's Car­ni­val and all the fren­zied, fran­tic fes­tiv­i­ties," he points out.  "“Most peo­ple flock to To­ba­go af­ter Trinidad Car­ni­val to re­lax and un­wind. So why not make your [To­ba­go’s] whole Car­ni­val sea­son the place of re­lax­ation for every­one?"

Mar­tin George says there are many more im­por­tant is­sues fac­ing the coun­try right now—ris­ing death rates from COVID-19; re­sus­ci­tat­ing the econ­o­my; en­sur­ing school chil­dren have a fu­ture; get­ting a han­dle on the crime sit­u­a­tion—and that’s where Gov­ern­ment should be putting its at­ten­tion.

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Mar­tin George was a guest on CNC3’s “The Morn­ing Brew” show on Wednes­day 26 Jan­u­ary 2022.