Tobago Carnival gets $12m as festival debt falls to $5m

Pan Trin­ba­go will par­tic­i­pate in To­ba­go Car­ni­val af­ter the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly set­tled the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s out­stand­ing pay­ments, with its Pan and Pow­der event sched­uled for Oc­to­ber 31 and ded­i­cat­ed to the late Mighty Spar­row.

Pan Trin­ba­go To­ba­go Re­gion chair­man Ka­dion Moore an­nounced the de­ci­sion at a press con­fer­ence on Wednes­day, thank­ing Tourism Sec­re­tary Zor­isha Hack­ett and To­ba­go Fes­ti­vals Com­mis­sion Lim­it­ed (TF­CL) chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Mr Cow­an for re­solv­ing the pay­ment is­sues.

The an­nounce­ment comes af­ter Pan Trin­ba­go pres­i­dent Bev­er­ley Ram­sey-Moore told Guardian Me­dia on Mon­day that the or­gan­i­sa­tion would boy­cott the an­nu­al fes­ti­val over out­stand­ing pay­ments of $1.7 mil­lion for last year’s Pan Omega and Pan and Pow­der events.

Ram­sey-Moore said the de­ci­sion was made by the To­ba­go re­gion and ful­ly sup­port­ed by its Trinidad coun­ter­parts. She said mem­bers had in­curred sig­nif­i­cant costs prepar­ing for Pan Omega 2026, sched­uled for Oc­to­ber 24, but would not take the stage while out­stand­ing bal­ances re­mained un­paid.

How­ev­er, Moore con­firmed that the or­gan­i­sa­tion would now take part in the fes­tiv­i­ties, with Pan and Pow­der sched­uled for Car­ni­val Sat­ur­day night. Pan Omega will not be held this year.

“We will be do­ing it in trib­ute to the Mighty Spar­row. So you can ex­pect the streets of Scar­bor­ough to be filled with the en­er­getic sound of the na­tion­al in­stru­ment,” he said.

Moore said the steel­bands would be tasked with play­ing the mu­sic of the late ca­lyp­son­ian.

He thanked Hack­ett and Cow­an for ad­dress­ing the out­stand­ing pay­ments, say­ing they had held nu­mer­ous dis­cus­sions be­fore reach­ing the agree­ment.

Hack­ett said set­tling the debt had been a com­mit­ment from the out­set, adding that the com­mis­sion made the pay­ment 24 hours ahead of the agreed date.

She ac­knowl­edged that Moore had been force­ful in press­ing the THA to ad­dress the mat­ter but said there was no ill will be­tween them.

“You had to do what you had to do and I had to do,” Hack­ett said.

She said the THA re­mained com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing steel­pan, de­scrib­ing it as an im­por­tant part of a suc­cess­ful car­ni­val.

“It doesn’t mean we don’t love and re­spect our na­tion­al in­stru­ment. And we’re go­ing to con­tin­ue to get that sup­port from us as a To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly,” she said.

Hack­ett al­so out­lined the wider fi­nan­cial chal­lenges fac­ing TF­CL, say­ing the com­mis­sion’s out­stand­ing debt had fall­en from more than $29 mil­lion to just un­der $5 mil­lion by last week.

She said the debt had ac­cu­mu­lat­ed from the com­mis­sion’s first car­ni­val, which took place at the be­gin­ning of a fi­nan­cial year and con­sumed a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the fes­ti­vals al­lo­ca­tion.

“One of the con­ver­sa­tions we had and one of the de­ci­sions we had to make ear­ly on was to more or less de­cide we’re not go­ing to have a jazz-like event this year,” Hack­ett said.

She said the de­ci­sion dis­ap­point­ed stake­hold­ers but was nec­es­sary to help the com­mis­sion re­duce its out­stand­ing pay­ments.

Hack­ett said the com­mis­sion had spent the past nine months re­duc­ing the debt while con­tin­u­ing to fund oth­er events, in­clud­ing div­ing ac­tiv­i­ties and un­der-16 crick­et.

She said the THA had ap­proved a bud­get cov­er­ing every fes­ti­val it planned to host dur­ing the year, in­clud­ing Na­tion­al Car­ni­val, East­er ac­tiv­i­ties, the To­ba­go Her­itage Fes­ti­val, the To­ba­go Blue Food Fes­ti­val and To­ba­go Car­ni­val 2026.

The al­lo­ca­tion for To­ba­go Car­ni­val is $12 mil­lion.

Hack­ett said the com­mis­sion con­tin­ued to bal­ance fund­ing up­com­ing events with clear­ing out­stand­ing pay­ments, but the ul­ti­mate goal was to elim­i­nate the debt.

“The re­al, re­al suc­cess sto­ry would be tak­ing it all the way down to ze­ro,” she said.

“The work con­tin­ues. It doesn’t end un­til we get that down to ze­ro.”

She said she was com­mit­ted to work­ing with Cow­an and his team to pre­vent the debt from be­com­ing a re­cur­ring prob­lem.

Hack­ett said Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine and Sec­re­tary Peta­lann Roberts had al­so com­mit­ted to help­ing clear the out­stand­ing pay­ments, so the com­mis­sion could or­gan­ise events with­out the bur­den of un­paid bills from pre­vi­ous fes­ti­vals.

She said she had pro­posed call­ing on stake­hold­ers af­ter the car­ni­val pe­ri­od to sub­mit any out­stand­ing in­voic­es that might have been over­looked.

Hack­ett said some debts could pre­date Cow­an’s ap­point­ment to the com­mis­sion about two years ago and her own ap­point­ment as tourism sec­re­tary on Jan­u­ary 26.

“We want to en­sure that we’re very tight on our books, and I’m go­ing to be mak­ing that call. Bring in your debt. Let’s set­tle the debt and start from ground ze­ro,” she said.

Hack­ett said the in­ten­tion was to en­sure stake­hold­ers were paid while the THA con­tin­ued to pro­mote To­ba­go Car­ni­val and sup­port the is­land’s fes­ti­vals and events.