Blue Waters says it’s proud to preserve T&T’s cultural legacy’

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­[email protected]

Days af­ter re­ports emerged that sev­er­al state cor­po­rate en­ti­ties had with­drawn their spon­sor­ship from the 2026 Di­vali Na­gar, the Na­tion­al Coun­cil of In­di­an Cul­ture (NCIC) yes­ter­day an­nounced that Blue Wa­ters had come on board as a Di­a­mond Spon­sor for this year’s cel­e­bra­tions. And the com­pa­ny says it is proud to as­sist in pre­serv­ing T&T’s cul­tur­al lega­cy.

The val­ue of the spon­sor­ship was not dis­closed but Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands it is worth $250,000.

The an­nounce­ment was made dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at the Di­vali Na­gar in Ch­agua­nas, where NCIC cor­po­rate project man­ag­er George Singh said sup­port from com­pa­nies such as Blue Wa­ters was es­sen­tial to the suc­cess of large-scale cul­tur­al events.

Ref­er­enc­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice fig­ures show­ing that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 322,000 peo­ple at­tend­ed Di­vali Na­gar over its nine-day run last year, Singh said at­tract­ing such num­bers was no small achieve­ment and thanked Blue Wa­ters for its sup­port.

“There has been a lot of com­ment about the com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of Di­vali Na­gar, but for cul­ture to grow and de­vel­op, sup­port from com­mer­cial en­ti­ties like Blue Wa­ters is very im­por­tant,” Singh said.

“We are hop­ing to make a few more an­nounce­ments like this over the next few days to show Trinidad and To­ba­go how im­por­tant Di­vali Na­gar is to the cor­po­rate sec­tor.”

Singh posed for pho­tographs with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Blue Wa­ters be­fore in­di­cat­ing he would not be tak­ing ques­tions from the me­dia.

Speak­ing briefly at the event, Blue Wa­ters Head of Com­mer­cial Avinash Lal­loo said the com­pa­ny was pleased to sup­port the cel­e­bra­tions, not­ing that cor­po­rate re­spon­si­bil­i­ty was best demon­strat­ed through mean­ing­ful com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ment.

“We be­lieve that cor­po­rate re­spon­si­bil­i­ty must be demon­strat­ed through ac­tion, and we en­cour­age oth­er com­pa­nies to come on board and be part of the cel­e­bra­tion. That is why we stand proud here to­day, not on­ly as a spon­sor, but as a part­ner in pre­serv­ing the cul­tur­al lega­cy of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Lal­loo said.

Fol­low­ing the brief­ing, Blue Wa­ters Chief Op­er­a­tions Of­fi­cer Ra­jiv Ra­goo­nanan con­firmed that Di­a­mond spon­sor­ship rep­re­sent­ed the high­est lev­el of sup­port avail­able to a sin­gle spon­sor but de­clined to re­veal the mon­e­tary val­ue of the com­pa­ny’s con­tri­bu­tion.

“In the realm of the Na­gar and the NCIC, Di­a­mond spon­sor­ship is the high­est lev­el. See­ing the need, we stepped in,” he said.

Ra­goo­nanan ex­plained that the lev­el of spon­sor­ship pro­vid­ed each year de­pends on the com­pa­ny’s an­nu­al bud­get­ing process.

“We plan for these events every year and as­sess our bud­get to de­ter­mine where we will in­vest in ad­ver­tis­ing, pro­mo­tion and com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ment,” he said.

He added that Blue Wa­ters’ in­volve­ment in this year’s Di­vali Na­gar, which marks the event’s 40th an­niver­sary, was a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone for the com­pa­ny. How­ev­er, he de­clined to pro­vide fur­ther de­tails on planned ac­tiv­i­ties, say­ing on­ly that pa­trons could ex­pect pro­mo­tions and give­aways.

NCIC first vice pres­i­dent Arvind Singh al­so said he was un­able to pro­vide de­tails on the spon­sor­ship amount. While wel­com­ing the sup­port from Blue Wa­ters, Singh ex­pressed hope that ad­di­tion­al cor­po­rate spon­sors would come for­ward.

“To have a pres­ence here re­quires a sig­nif­i­cant lev­el of spon­sor­ship. It will not cov­er all our costs, be­cause it takes a lot to run Di­vali Na­gar, but we are grate­ful for every con­tri­bu­tion and look for­ward to oth­er cor­po­rate en­ti­ties com­ing on board,” he said.

“We have been get­ting var­i­ous peo­ple com­ing for­ward and of­fer­ing help, so we’re work­ing on it.”

Asked whether long­stand­ing spon­sors such as the Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board (NL­CB), bmo­bile, First Cit­i­zens and Na­tion­al Flour Mills had giv­en rea­sons for with­draw­ing sup­port, Singh said he was un­aware of any ex­pla­na­tions.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Min­is­ter of Cul­ture and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Michelle Ben­jamin for com­ment but re­ceived no re­sponse up to press time on yes­ter­day.