The Trinidad and To­ba­go Pro­mot­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTPA) has dis­tanced it­self from the or­gan­is­ers of the con­tro­ver­sial One Caribbean Mu­sic Fes­ti­val and is now call­ing for sweep­ing leg­isla­tive re­form in the en­ter­tain­ment and tourism sec­tors, la­belling the cur­rent mo­ment “piv­otal”.

In a state­ment is­sued Mon­day, the as­so­ci­a­tion ex­pressed deep con­cern over the fall­out from the event, which fea­tured Vy­bz Kar­tel and oth­er ma­jor acts but has drawn wide­spread crit­i­cism from pa­trons and stake­hold­ers. The TTPA stressed that the event’s pro­duc­er is not a mem­ber of the as­so­ci­a­tion.

“To be clear – we do not speak for the group nor do we speak on be­half of the group,” the TTPA said. “How­ev­er, we want to say – at all times, it is our hope that events held on our shores are ex­e­cut­ed suc­cess­ful­ly. When that does not hap­pen, it im­pacts the whole in­dus­try.”

While of­fer­ing sol­i­dar­i­ty to dis­ap­point­ed fans, the TTPA al­so used the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ad­vo­cate for ur­gent pol­i­cy change. “This event was not up to our stan­dards and about this we are ex­treme­ly con­cerned,” the state­ment read. “We be­lieve it is time to broad­en di­a­logue with the state and our pri­vate sec­tor part­ners.”

The group said it in­tends to lead a con­sul­ta­tive process for “deep leg­isla­tive re­form” tai­lored to the en­ter­tain­ment and tourism in­dus­tries, cit­ing the need for mod­ern pro­tec­tions for pa­trons, cre­atives and pro­mot­ers. It said it plans to re­sume talks with the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s of­fice to push for “spe­cif­ic and mod­ern leg­is­la­tion”.

The as­so­ci­a­tion be­lieves that the cur­rent pub­lic out­cry can act as a cat­a­lyst. “We now have a gold­en op­por­tu­ni­ty to shine a spot­light on the chal­lenges that we face glob­al­ly, to win the bat­tle for tourism dol­lars via our event prod­uct,” the state­ment read.

Meet­ings have al­ready been held with the new Min­is­ter of Cul­ture and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment. The TTPA said it would al­so seek dis­cus­sions with min­is­ters re­spon­si­ble for trade, plan­ning, fi­nance, na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, and the cre­ative econ­o­my, as well as copy­right agen­cies and law en­force­ment bod­ies.

With the 2026 event sea­son fast ap­proach­ing, the group said it wants to en­sure the right sys­tems are in place to pro­tect the in­dus­try’s in­tegri­ty. “We stand ready to con­tribute ro­bust­ly to this ef­fort,” it said.

The as­so­ci­a­tion end­ed its state­ment with a mes­sage of re­gret to fans. “We are sad­dened that our loy­al en­ter­tain­ment pa­trons felt that they were mis­treat­ed,” it said. “We be­lieve that we can be pro­tect­ed from sit­u­a­tions like this, if sol­id busi­ness prac­tices are em­ployed by all.”

It re­it­er­at­ed that most lo­cal pro­mot­ers “en­gage our peo­ple in good faith” and vowed to con­tin­ue work­ing with ex­perts to help the in­dus­try evolve “as we nav­i­gate the shift­ing sand of the glob­al en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try”.