he newly built Carnival seating facilities at the Queen’s Park Savannah which was completed at a cost of more than $50 million in time for Carnival activities this year, is being “tweaked” to make it better for patrons attending Carnival activities come 2012. Minister of Arts and Multiculturism, Winston Gypsy Peters said on Saturday.
Peters was at the time fielding questions from reports at the Launch of Carnival 2012, at the Queen’s Park Savannah, Port-of-Spain. According to Peters, “We are enhancing the facilities and making it better. This needs a little tweaking here and there so we are improving on the facilities,” Peters said.
According to Peters, Carnival 2012 is going to be branded “The Real Thing”. He said he is expecting a bigger, better Carnival 2012 with more tourists than ever before. He noted that people should feel safer because the recently disbanded state of emergency (SoE) had a positive effect on the country. Peters said, “The National Carnival Bands Commission (NCBA) has confirmed that there will be more bands on the road next year, so Carnival is going to be bigger. Carnival is going to be safe, innovative and vibrant. It is going to be a spectacle to behold; it’s going to be a bigger, better Carnival. People should feel safer being in Trinidad and Tobago today.
Last year had a record-breaking visitorship in the country and we had more crime than we have now.
There is no reason why we should not have more people now in the country; the SoE has had a positive effect on the country.”
Questioned on the Carnival routes Peters said unless the routes are expanded to other places in the city, routes will always be a problem. “The routes will always be a problem, there is nothing that we can do because Carnival keeps expanding and every year we get larger bands and the fact is that this is what we are going to have unless and until we expand the routes to other places in the city,” he said.
While the government increased prize monies for all the major Carnival competitions this year, Peters confirmed that last year’s $2 million was a “one off”. “There will be no $2 million prize monies next year.
We made it clear this year that it was a one off thing. The government could only do what we could do,” Peters said.
