Miss Grand T&T 2025 win­ner Tama­ra Per­sad is claim­ing she has been un­cer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly stripped of her ti­tle and re­placed by the sec­ond run­ner-up.

While she has yet to re­ceive of­fi­cial cor­re­spon­dence from lo­cal pageant or­gan­is­er Stolen Pro­duc­tions Ltd, Per­sad said the sec­ond run­ner-up, Monique Joseph, was sent to the Philip­pines for train­ing ahead of the com­pe­ti­tion sched­uled for Oc­to­ber in Thai­land.

In an in­ter­view at Guardian Me­dia’s San Fer­nan­do of­fice yes­ter­day, 17-year-old Per­sad, who was ac­com­pa­nied by her moth­er, ex­plained that in ear­ly Au­gust she was told the voice coach was dis­sat­is­fied with her speak­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties, and pageant of­fi­cials al­so raised con­cerns about as­pects of her phys­i­cal ap­pear­ance.

“Hon­est­ly, I feel a bit heart­bro­ken due to they broke a lot of promis­es, and telling me due to, I am not speak­ing prop­er­ly. Due to my teeth ...due to cer­tain flaws in me, I am not able to go. I can­not see if I have all these prob­lems how can you let me win a com­pe­ti­tion, if you all know this from the be­gin­ning.”

She said that from March to the lead-up to the com­pe­ti­tion in Ju­ly, she un­der­went gru­elling train­ing from 8 am to 6 pm dai­ly. Per­sad, who hails from Rio Claro, was crowned Miss Grand Trinidad and To­ba­go on Ju­ly 12 af­ter out­shin­ing 15 oth­er con­tes­tants at the pageant held at the Le Rêve Con­fer­ence Cen­tre, C3 Cen­tre, San Fer­nan­do.

She said she at­tend­ed four train­ing ses­sions with the speech coach, but on the sec­ond day she re­alised that the coach was un­hap­py with her re­sponse to a par­tic­u­lar ques­tion and seemed re­luc­tant to con­tin­ue work­ing with her.

“They give me promis­es based on they will fix cer­tain things like my teeth, the way I speak, my looks, my hair and the promis­es were bro­ken.”

Per­sad said Stolen Pro­duc­tions Ltd has not of­fi­cial­ly in­formed her that she has been stripped of her ti­tle, but on Sun­day she learned that the sec­ond run­ner-up was in the Philip­pines re­ceiv­ing the train­ing she was en­ti­tled to as the win­ner of the com­pe­ti­tion.

Hav­ing dreamed of pur­su­ing mod­el­ling on an in­ter­na­tion­al stage for as long as she can re­mem­ber, Per­sad said her heart aches.

“I just want to feel re­lieved. I want a good ex­pla­na­tion be­cause telling me all of these things is not a good ex­pla­na­tion to me be­cause keep­ing promis­es is a big thing to me. You say that you are go­ing to do this and that for me and it’s noth­ing in re­turn. As I think many peo­ple know I did not get a cash prize.”

How­ev­er, she said Miss Grand In­ter­na­tion­al seemed un­aware of what was hap­pen­ing, as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive con­tact­ed her last week re­quest­ing that she send a 30-sec­ond video.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed the first run­ner-up, Tine­ka Fran­cois, but she of­fered no com­ment. Pageant of­fi­cial Kehru Ram­sub­hag al­so de­clined to com­ment but in­di­cat­ed she would reach out to Per­sad.

This is not the first time the pageant, found­ed in 2023, has faced con­tro­ver­sy. Venezue­lan-born Milei­dy Mat­er­a­no won the com­pe­ti­tion in 2023 and was sched­uled to rep­re­sent the coun­try in Viet­nam. How­ev­er, there was pub­lic up­roar over a non-na­tion­al be­ing cho­sen to rep­re­sent T&T. Mat­er­a­no even­tu­al­ly with­drew from the com­pe­ti­tion, cit­ing the re­quire­ment to se­cure her own spon­sor­ship for the in­ter­na­tion­al pageant as her rea­son.