Pan Trinbago to boycott Tobago carnival over $1.7m debt

Stephon Nicholas

Three weeks away from To­ba­go car­ni­val, Pan Trin­ba­go has de­cid­ed to boy­cott the an­nu­al fes­ti­val.

Pan Trin­ba­go head Bev­er­ley Ram­sey-Moore said the de­ci­sion was made by the To­ba­go re­gion, and was ful­ly sup­port­ed by their Trinidad coun­ter­parts. In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia on Mon­day, Ram­sey-Moore said the or­gan­i­sa­tion is still owed $1.7 mil­lion for last year's Pan Omega and Pan and Pow­der events.

She said mem­bers in­curred sig­nif­i­cant cost mo­bil­is­ing in prepa­ra­tion for Pan Omega 2026, sched­uled for Oc­to­ber 24, but will not take the stage with out­stand­ing bal­ances lin­ger­ing.

In a me­dia state­ment on Sun­day, the To­ba­go Fes­ti­vals Com­mis­sion Ltd (TF­CL) ac­knowl­edged its debt to Pan Trin­ba­go and not­ed dis­cus­sions have been held with the pan fra­ter­ni­ty, the To­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­son­ian Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO), band­lead­ers and ser­vice providers.

TF­CL said its pay­ment records show a $1,544,690 dis­burse­ment to Pan Trin­ba­go, in­clud­ing $1,081,690 as­so­ci­at­ed with Pan Omega 2025, and pay­ments for oth­er per­for­mances and ac­tiv­i­ties. It not­ed its sup­port to the pan fra­ter­ni­ty by pro­vid­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties to per­form at Blue Food Fes­ti­val, To­ba­go Her­itage Fes­ti­val and even abroad.

TF­CL said it recog­nised the im­por­tance of set­tling the debt, but not­ed pay­ments of out­stand­ing bal­ances are con­tin­gent on the re­lease of funds.

Tourism Sec­re­tary Zor­isha Hack­ett told Guardian Me­dia, since as­sum­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the di­vi­sion in Jan­u­ary, her main fo­cus was set­tling pay­ments to ser­vice providers.

"The debt I met as sec­re­tary was a lit­tle over $29 mil­lion. Through pri­ori­tis­ing and mak­ing tough de­ci­sions, we were able to get it to just un­der $10 mil­lion, and the work con­tin­ues to take it down to ze­ro," she said.