Shas­tri Boodan

Ch­agua­nas May­or Faaiq Mo­hammed has ap­pealed to the Gov­ern­ment to pro­vide greater sup­port for cul­tur­al cel­e­bra­tions in the bor­ough, high­light­ing their role in fos­ter­ing com­mu­ni­ty uni­ty and en­gag­ing youth.

Speak­ing to the me­dia yes­ter­day as the Fe­lic­i­ty Ganesh Ut­sav Fes­ti­vals Com­mit­tee con­clud­ed its ten-day ob­ser­vance, May­or Mo­hammed de­scribed the event as the sec­ond-largest fes­ti­val in Fe­lic­i­ty af­ter Di­vali. He em­pha­sised that such cel­e­bra­tions not on­ly pre­serve cul­ture but al­so pro­vide pos­i­tive out­lets for young peo­ple.

“Fes­ti­vals bring the com­mu­ni­ty to­geth­er,” he said, adding that they play a vi­tal role in en­cour­ag­ing youth to par­tic­i­pate in pro­duc­tive and mean­ing­ful ac­tiv­i­ties.

Look­ing ahead, Mo­hammed re­vealed that the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion plans to em­bark on in­fra­struc­tur­al works in the area. Projects for the com­ing fi­nan­cial year in­clude the con­struc­tion of a re­tain­ing wall to pre­vent tidal wa­ters from flood­ing the cre­ma­tion site, along with a pro­gramme to widen the road­way.

Fes­ti­val Com­mit­tee Pres­i­dent Ganesh Ra­goo­nanan dis­closed that stag­ing this year’s cel­e­bra­tions cost ap­prox­i­mate­ly $200,000, ful­ly cov­ered through pri­vate sec­tor sup­port. He not­ed that pre­vi­ous ap­pli­ca­tions for state fund­ing had been un­suc­cess­ful.

The fes­tiv­i­ties be­gan on Au­gust 26 with the in­stal­la­tion of a clay mur­ti at Ca­can­dee Road. Each evening fea­tured prayer gath­er­ings and poo­jas, cul­mi­nat­ing on Sat­ur­day with a vi­brant street pa­rade through Fe­lic­i­ty. The cel­e­bra­tions con­clud­ed with the im­mer­sion of the eco-friend­ly mur­ti in the Cunu­pia Riv­er at the end of Ca­can­dee Road.

Ra­goo­nanan stressed that the mur­ti was craft­ed en­tire­ly from clay, en­sur­ing it was en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly.

Now a cor­ner­stone of cul­tur­al life in cen­tral Trinidad, the Fe­lic­i­ty Ganesh Ut­sav con­tin­ues to flour­ish through com­mu­ni­ty ef­fort, but or­gan­is­ers say state as­sis­tance would help the fes­ti­val reach even greater heights.