NCC yet to receive its $147M; regional carnival events in limbo

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NCC yet to receive its $147M; regional carnival events in limbo

National Carnival Commission chairman Winston “Gypsy” Peters said the national body had not yet received its $147 million from the Government and as such, has yet to supply the money to regional carnival bodies.

“All these things we are doing here this minute, we haven’t received our subvention as yet so we can’t give to anybody. Well, we give some money that we have. We would, of course, give some people but those big sums, that we can’t do,” Peters said.

He said they were hoping to get the funding on Wednesday and would then release it to the regional bodies who host Carnival activities.

However, Peters, in a GML interview, said that it is not standard funding that goes out to the regional corporations who host events.

“It is according to the size of the celebrations. San Fernando and Arima are two of the biggest celebrations, various corporations and various regional bodies that are doing Carnival and we have a lot of bodies that are doing it.”

Despite the setback, Peters said preparations were on target and he expected them to be finished in time for Carnival Monday and Tuesday.

“Preparations for Carnival always going to be finished on time and preparations for Carnival will always have hiccups because that’s the nature of the things that we do,” Peters said.

Some regional corporations have been forced to either scale down or completely cancel their Carnival celebrations due to late subventions from the National Carnival Commission (NCC).

The San Fernando City Corporation was the first to take such measure on Tuesday, when it announced it had cancelled its Kings and Queens Carnival competition due to the late funding from the NCC.

A few regional bodies have scrapped or are thinking of scrapping their carnival activities.

The Penal/Debe Regional Corporation (PDRC) announced it had scrapped its Carnival completely.

PDRC chairman Dr Allan Sammy said, “We are saying it is a national event and we should spread it geographically and the thing about Debe, it includes La Romain and they are usually the ones registering first, but in the event that we didn’t hear anything, we scrapped it.”

Arima Mayor Cagne Casimire said they requested $665,000 and nothing at all.
“Most of our programmes we have to cancel or just not do. There are bands who are waiting to see what’s happening and they would have been committed already, so they’re just on the cutting edge, so we are on the cutting edge too.”

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