Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

With just over a month to go be­fore the Oc­to­ber Car­ni­val, sev­er­al of To­ba­go’s ma­jor Car­ni­val stake­hold­ers have dis­tanced them­selves from Wednes­day night’s of­fi­cial launch.

For weeks, Guardian Me­dia sought de­tails on the launch date, bud­get and plan­ning up­dates, but re­peat­ed at­tempts to con­tact As­sis­tant Tourism Sec­re­tary Niall George and To­ba­go Fes­ti­vals Com­mis­sion chair­man Kern Cow­an went unan­swered.

When the launch fi­nal­ly came, the ab­sence of To­ba­go’s biggest bands was glar­ing. Jade Mon­key Mas, Fog An­gels and Icon­ic Mas—three groups that to­geth­er at­tract close to 9,000 mas­quer­aders—were not present.

Four band­lead­ers spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty about their de­ci­sion. Three said they felt dis­re­spect­ed by what they de­scribed as poor plan­ning and a lack of con­sul­ta­tion.

One stat­ed blunt­ly: “I’m not go­ing to that garbage. I have peo­ple com­ing to reg­is­ter tonight and I am stay­ing to mind my busi­ness.”

An­oth­er ques­tioned the waste of re­sources giv­en that thou­sands of mas­quer­aders have al­ready se­cured cos­tumes.

“Mil­lions have al­ready been spent to mar­ket and do a band launch weeks be­fore the ac­tu­al event. At this stage, peo­ple done buy their pack­ages months ago.”

One pro­mot­er said he feared speak­ing pub­licly.

“I didn’t want to call you be­cause I might get black­list­ed, but don’t use my name ... We weren’t in­clud­ed in the plan­ning and we were side­lined. What they said they were go­ing to de­liv­er was not de­liv­ered.”

He said the de­ci­sion not to at­tend was de­lib­er­ate and made joint­ly with oth­er stake­hold­ers.

An­oth­er pro­mot­er put it more harsh­ly: “I didn’t go to the non­sense. I don’t know what that was. They meet with the sec­tor as a façade, then do what they want.”

Al­so ab­sent were To­ba­go Oc­to­ber Car­ni­val As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Dex­ter Sandy and To­ba­go Pro­mot­ers As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Kevon McKen­na. At­tempts to reach them were un­suc­cess­ful.

Guardian Me­dia was told some stake­hold­ers re­ceived emails ear­li­er, while oth­ers got phone calls on­ly hours be­fore the event.

On the ground at the Com­fort Inn, the event drew on­ly a small crowd of main­ly mi­nor stake­hold­ers. Ac­cess was re­strict­ed to a guest list, and sev­er­al peo­ple de­scribed it as a last-minute af­fair.

Tourism Sec­re­tary Tashia Bur­ris, who an­nounced this year’s Car­ni­val bud­get would be $12 mil­lion, up from $8 mil­lion last year, could not be reached for com­ment yes­ter­day.