Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

There will be no To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA)-fund­ed fire­works dis­play for In­de­pen­dence Day cel­e­bra­tions in To­ba­go to­mor­row.

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine said de­lays in the pro­cure­ment process made it legal­ly im­pos­si­ble for the THA to fi­nance the dis­play. How­ev­er, he as­sured that the cel­e­bra­tions would go ahead af­ter pri­vate-sec­tor spon­sors agreed to cov­er the cost.

“We have been able to se­cure two spon­sors who will pro­vide an ex­cel­lent fire­works show for us,” Au­gus­tine said dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence last week.

The spon­sors are Cal­i­for­nia Stuc­coo Ltd and Maibrol In­sur­ance Bro­kers. Au­gus­tine not­ed that Cal­i­for­nia Stuc­coo is ac­tive­ly in­volved in sev­er­al projects in To­ba­go.

The com­pa­ny has been award­ed THA con­tracts for road con­struc­tion and is al­so man­ag­ing the $141.9 mil­lion Rise­land hous­ing de­vel­op­ment in Carn­bee.

“There will be a grand fire­works dis­play,” Au­gus­tine said.

“I am just an­noyed that I had to pick up the phone and ask peo­ple to spon­sor fire­works when I was cer­tain the Sec­re­tary of Fi­nance had made the nec­es­sary re­leas­es for us to have the event. We had suf­fi­cient time to con­duct a ten­der and pro­cure the ac­tiv­i­ty.”

In­de­pen­dence Day ac­tiv­i­ties be­gin with a 5K run at 5 a.m., fol­lowed by cy­cling races at 6 a.m.

The an­nu­al pa­rade starts at the Pa­rade Grounds in Ba­co­let at 8 a.m., with par­tic­i­pants march­ing through the streets from 9.30 a.m.

At noon, at­ten­tion shifts to the Scar­bor­ough Es­planade for power­boat rac­ing, be­fore a fam­i­ly-friend­ly cul­tur­al show gets un­der­way at 6.30 p.m.

Au­gus­tine en­cour­aged the pub­lic to at­tend the cel­e­bra­tions, which will cul­mi­nate with the spon­sored fire­works dis­play lat­er in the evening.