Prepa­ra­tions for To­ba­go Car­ni­val 2025 are mov­ing full steam ahead, ac­cord­ing to the is­land’s Car­ni­val As­so­ci­a­tion. The as­so­ci­a­tion’s pres­i­dent said there was al­ready high­er mas­quer­ad­er reg­is­tra­tion com­pared to last year, de­spite the State of Emer­gency (SoE) cur­rent­ly in ef­fect.

The To­ba­go Car­ni­val As­so­ci­a­tion said it has not re­ceived any re­ports of neg­a­tive fall­out from bands or mas­quer­aders due to the SoE. In­stead, in­ter­est in this year’s event has been “re­al­ly en­cour­ag­ing”, with on­line reg­is­tra­tions al­ready sur­pass­ing last year’s fig­ures.

“As it re­lates to the an­nounce­ment of the SoE, so far, we don’t have any neg­a­tive im­pact re­port­ed from the mas bands,” the as­so­ci­a­tion’s pres­i­dent Dex­ter Sandy told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

“Mas­quer­aders are still reg­is­ter­ing through their on­line por­tals to the bands that have gone live. As a mat­ter of fact, we have seen a bet­ter re­sponse this year than last year in terms of reg­is­tra­tion of mas­quer­aders.”

He said bands are see­ing steady sign-ups, even the ones that had a late start, and the as­so­ci­a­tion an­tic­i­pates an even larg­er turnout on the road this Oc­to­ber.

“All en­er­gies and all ef­forts so far are re­flect­ing pos­i­tive­ly, and we go­ing to see—we an­tic­i­pate a high­er turnout in terms of par­tic­i­pa­tion on the road for Car­ni­val,” Sandy said.

He added that the as­so­ci­a­tion is mon­i­tor­ing of­fi­cial up­dates from the is­land’s po­lice di­vi­sion and a re­cent state­ment is­sued from the Of­fice of the Chief Sec­re­tary has com­fort­ed the as­so­ci­a­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly the launch of To­ba­go’s safe­ty app and an emer­gency num­ber.

“One thing the Se­nior Supt re­it­er­at­ed is that To­ba­go is safe, and that re­al­ly gives us some ad­di­tion­al com­fort, know­ing that Car­ni­val is ap­proach­ing and SoE is in ef­fect.”

He point­ed out that this is not the first time Car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ties have un­fold­ed dur­ing height­ened se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures. Trinidad and To­ba­go’s na­tion­al Car­ni­val ear­li­er this year, held be­tween Jan­u­ary and March, al­so took place un­der a State of Emer­gency.

“SoE is not some­thing new to the is­land or even to the coun­try,” Sandy said.

He said the as­so­ci­a­tion does not an­tic­i­pate any dis­rup­tion to Car­ni­val and be­lieves law-abid­ing cit­i­zens can ex­pect busi­ness as usu­al.

“So we def­i­nite­ly look for­ward to bumper sea­son come Oc­to­ber 2025. To all per­sons look­ing to come to To­ba­go, we are open for busi­ness as usu­al and all bands are ready to of­fer a safe and high-qual­i­ty ex­pe­ri­ence.”

To­ba­go Car­ni­val, launched as a stand­alone event in 2022, has grown steadi­ly since its de­but. Last year’s edi­tion saw mod­er­ate turnout, with some bands re­port­ing late reg­is­tra­tions and lo­gis­ti­cal is­sues.