Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor—News­gath­er­ing

Port-of-Spain May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne has de­clared Down­town Car­ni­val 2024 a suc­cess.

“I think, I think that things went very well. We don’t give our­selves enough cred­it for the abil­i­ty that we have to host this sig­nif­i­cant fes­ti­val,” he told re­porters as he an­nounced the re­sults of Down­town Car­ni­val com­pe­ti­tions on Wednes­day.

Al­leyne, who said he was di­rect­ly in­volved in sev­er­al stake­hold­er meet­ings to en­sure a smooth fes­ti­val, added, “You will not spare thought for what prepa­ra­tions T&TEC has to put in place, for ex­am­ple, in case there’s any out­age of pow­er on Car­ni­val Tues­day. Many stake­hold­ers come to­geth­er every sin­gle year to make this fes­ti­val a suc­cess.”

The May­or said he was pleased with the work of all stake­hold­ers in­clud­ing the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, City Po­lice and CEPEP, who joined with staff of the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion to en­sure the city was clean af­ter two days of Pa­rade of the Bands.

As he read the re­sults of the Down­town Car­ni­val com­pe­ti­tions, Al­leyne not­ed that at­ten­dance was high­er than in pre­vi­ous years, which he hoped could con­tin­ue.

“The resur­gence in in­ter­est at the Down­town Car­ni­val stands is be­cause of the work that we’re do­ing in the city. It’s be­cause of the lead­er­ship of Coun­cil­lor (Jen­neil) Fred­er­ick in lead­ing the Down­town Car­ni­val Com­mit­tee. We will con­tin­ue to do that work and we ex­pect to be able to reap the ben­e­fits of that go­ing for­ward with even greater at­ten­dance for Car­ni­val 2025 and be­yond,” he said. Over the years, as bands opt­ed to take oth­er routes to judg­ing points, pa­trons com­plained that Down­town Mas on South Quay was be­ing ne­glect­ed.

This year, there were on­ly three judg­ing points as Adam Smith Square and Vic­to­ria Square are no longer judg­ing points. The Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah was a manda­to­ry point, while Pic­cadil­ly Greens was op­tion­al.

That opened Down­town (South Quay) to judge Band of the Year.