Long wait to cross stage nothing new

THE EDITOR: The Government is doing it again! This time it is “spinning” over the issue of the long wait for bands to get across the Queen’s Park Savannah stage. The Minister of Culture says her government is looking into building a new venue for holding Carnival, since the present one “has outgrown itself.”

According to the Minister herself, the government has talked about this for many years before and already has various architectural plans in hand for review to build such a facility. So, I hope all of this is not just more “after Carnival” analysis and rhetoric to try and appease the angry mass of players and bandleaders. The question then becomes, how many more Carnivals must go by before a decision is made on a plan, the funding of it, the selection of an appropriate site and the commencement of construction? All of this will take time and so this matter must be given “top priority” (among the many others), if the Government is really serious about doing something to “fix” this continuous Carnival problem.

TT is a reactionary country in the way we operate. There seems to be very little “planning” or thought that goes into anything to attempt to forestall foreseeable events. This being said, I believe that it is high time that a decision be made to build a new venue for Carnival. The time is now and not later. If not, we will continue to gripe after each Carnival for many more to come, only to come back and play mas year after year, even with our annual frustrations, because “we love our Carnival so much”.

Kelvin C.James, Sr
Port-of-Spain