Sascha Wil­son

The Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) has signed off on a $350,000 al­lo­ca­tion for San Fer­nan­do Car­ni­val. San Fer­nan­do May­or Ju­nia Re­grel­lo con­firmed yes­ter­day that the cheque was signed since Tues­day, but the cor­po­ra­tion had not yet re­ceived the fund­ing.

He was hop­ing that they would re­ceive the mon­ey by to­day.

Dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence on Wednes­day, band­leader An­tho­ny Charles com­plained about the de­lay in fund­ing and al­so raised con­cerns about whether there would be judg­ing on Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day.

In a pre­vi­ous in­ter­view, the may­or had ex­pressed his dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the fund­ing to host Car­ni­val in the south­ern city, and sug­gest­ed that $3 mil­lion was an ap­pro­pri­ate sum.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Re­grel­lo as­sured that there will be judg­ing on Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day. He al­so sought to clar­i­fy a re­lease ear­li­er this week from the cor­po­ra­tion, in­di­cat­ing that the King and Queen of the Band com­pe­ti­tion, which was ini­tial­ly sched­uled for Tues­day, was can­celled.

Not­ing that the com­pe­ti­tion will in­stead be held on Car­ni­val Tues­day, he ad­mit­ted that the re­lease was not prop­er­ly word­ed.

“I can’t vet every­thing. I had coun­cil meet­ing that same day. I did not even see that un­til af­ter the fact,” he said.

Re­grel­lo be­lieves that go­ing for­ward, Car­ni­val has to be­come self-sus­tained and in­de­pen­dent.

“We can­not be de­pend­ing on Gov­ern­ment and state to fund Car­ni­val. We have to in a very pro­found way come with a busi­ness plan that is sus­tain­able.”

Re­grel­lo said the so­lu­tion is lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form, where­by mon­ey can be de­rived and strate­gi­cal­ly po­si­tioned to gen­er­ate prof­itabil­i­ty in a sus­tain­able and long plan­ning way.

In terms of seek­ing cor­po­rate spon­sor­ship, he said store own­ers on High Street do not have the re­sources to fund Car­ni­val.

“They strug­gling to make ends meet,” he added.

While bands are still reg­is­ter­ing for the Car­ni­val com­pe­ti­tion, as of yes­ter­day there were 13 bands for the Pa­rade of Bands, 13 kid­dies bands and 18 J’Ou­vert bands.