Mayor reassures public Point Fortin Borough Day on

KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Point Fortin May­or Clyde James has dis­missed re­ports that some of the biggest Bor­ough Day events have been scrapped, as­sur­ing res­i­dents and vis­i­tors that the cel­e­bra­tions are still on and will roll out as planned.

The Point Fortin Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion al­so con­firmed that Bor­ough Day fes­tiv­i­ties will run from April 10-May 3, cli­max­ing with Bor­ough Day on May 2. Ru­mours cir­cu­lat­ing on­line over the week­end had sug­gest­ed that pop­u­lar sta­ples such as J’Ou­vert, the street pa­rade and Pan on the Move, along with sev­er­al long-stand­ing fetes, had been can­celled.

“These claims are false and mis­lead­ing,” James said in a state­ment, adding that the cor­po­ra­tion was forced to re­spond af­ter in­ac­cu­rate on­line search­es and spec­u­la­tive posts gained trac­tion.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, he said the in­ten­tion is to keep the tra­di­tion­al two weeks of ac­tiv­i­ties lead­ing up to Bor­ough Day. He not­ed that plan­ning is al­ready well ad­vanced and the cor­po­ra­tion has met with key stake­hold­ers.

“So far, the plan is to have the usu­al two weeks of fes­tiv­i­ties lead­ing up to the May 2 Bor­ough Day cel­e­bra­tion. The pro­gramme of ac­tiv­i­ties will be re­leased by Wednes­day, as the PF­BC has al­ready met with the stake­hold­ers,” James said.

While the cel­e­bra­tions are con­firmed, the may­or ac­knowl­edged that fi­nanc­ing the fes­ti­val re­mains a ma­jor con­cern fol­low­ing re­duced al­lo­ca­tions in the 2026 na­tion­al bud­get. Though he could not put an ex­act fig­ure on the over­all cost, he es­ti­mat­ed it would re­quire “a few mil­lion dol­lars” to stage a sat­is­fac­to­ry cel­e­bra­tion.

“Most of the fund­ing, in the past, used to come from our cel­e­bra­tion events, but this year, I think that ac­count is de­plet­ed, and so we are go­ing to cor­po­rate Trinidad to get the fund­ing for Bor­ough Day 2026,” he said.

Fund­ing short­falls, he added, are now a re­cur­ring chal­lenge.

“It will al­ways be a con­cern. When we do not get gov­ern­ment fund­ing, we have to look for fund­ing from cor­po­rate Trinidad and To­ba­go,” James said.

Be­cause Bor­ough Day has been de­clared a na­tion­al fes­ti­val, James said the coun­cil al­so in­tends to ap­proach the cen­tral gov­ern­ment and state agen­cies for as­sis­tance. He added that the coun­cil’s month­ly statu­to­ry meet­ing is be­ing held to­day, with Bor­ough Day cel­e­bra­tions list­ed on the agen­da.

James urged the pub­lic to re­ly on­ly on of­fi­cial sources for in­for­ma­tion, in­clud­ing the bor­ough cor­po­ra­tion’s ver­i­fied plat­forms and re­leas­es from the May­or’s Of­fice, un­til the full cal­en­dar of events is pub­lished lat­er this week.

In a sep­a­rate live Face­book broad­cast yes­ter­day, Point Fortin MP Ernesto Ke­sar de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as a case of “mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion” and thanked the may­or’s of­fice for is­su­ing a pub­lic clar­i­fi­ca­tion. He said Bor­ough Day is the coun­try’s biggest fes­ti­val af­ter Car­ni­val and re­quires care­ful co­or­di­na­tion to en­sure its suc­cess.

“I just want to as­sure our di­as­po­ra com­mu­ni­ty, our re­gion­al and for­eign vis­i­tors who have al­ready geared up and bought their tick­ets and so on, our in­ter­nal vis­i­tors from Port-of-Spain, Ari­ma and all over Trinidad and To­ba­go, and of course us here in Point Fortin, that we are look­ing for­ward to a bumper Bor­ough Day, a mas­sive Bor­ough Day, and we are live and alive and ready,” Ke­sar said.

He stressed that Bor­ough Day 2026 is def­i­nite­ly tak­ing place and urged res­i­dents not to be dis­tract­ed by on­line spec­u­la­tion. Ke­sar said the fes­ti­val is a crit­i­cal op­por­tu­ni­ty for lo­cal busi­ness­es and tourism and must be pro­tect­ed.

As MP, he said, he is shar­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty with the bor­ough cor­po­ra­tion and oth­er stake­hold­ers to en­sure the cel­e­bra­tions are safe, well-or­gan­ised and eco­nom­i­cal­ly vi­able for both lo­cal and vis­it­ing busi­ness­es.