00:00As the government moves to dissolve the National Carnival Commission and replace it with the National Festivals Commission, stakeholders are
00:09urging the powers that be to hold their hand.
00:12You must realize that carnival cannot be flattened into or bundled with other festivals. It just shouldn't be done, you
00:23know, as it is germane to who we are.
00:27President of the Artists' Coalition, Rubineri Victor, notes the impact that TNT's carnival has had on the world as a
00:36strong defense for the NCC to be preserved and improved upon.
00:41There are 300 Trinidad-style carnivals all over planet Earth. They're worth over $15 billion annually.
00:49That the NCC actually needs to be ramped up as an independent body with anthropologists and marketing persons and proper
00:57people and management people and those kinds of things.
01:01That is what needs to happen so that right now we're bringing in $1.3 billion. Carnival should be earning
01:08$3 billion and more.
01:09Victor is, however, in support of a National Cultural Committee being set up, as he laments, all traditions are slowly
01:17being eroded.
01:192010, around there, we had marked that there were 144 traditions that were in clear and present danger of disappearing,
01:26because at that time they were only in two or three elders' heads and hands.
01:33From that time to now, I would posit that we probably have lost over 50 of those traditions completely. They're
01:41completely gone.
01:42We know that in Jose and different kinds of things, there are traditions that have completely disappeared in the last
01:49decade or so.
01:49He believes government's first port of call should be the preservation of our culture.
01:55We do not have institutions of memory. We do not have spaces of memory, right?
02:00So there's no hall of fame, no proper museums, no proper curriculum. It's not all in legacy. It's not contained
02:09in any of those things.
02:10Meantime, Ashby is calling on the government to consider Carnival as an example of the capacity of our systems.
02:18People will tell you off the bat, Port of Spain is one of the dirtiest capital cities they have ever
02:22come across in their life and whatever, whatever.
02:24Have you seen Port of Spain, the average Ash Wednesday morning?
02:29I don't know what's happening lately, but I know before Ash Wednesday morning, Port of Spain is the cleanest you
02:34will ever see it, right?
02:37What happens when there's this command center for Carnival with crime? What happens?
02:45The crime goes down. So inside of the Carnival, inside of the operation of the Carnival, as imperfect as it
02:52may be, are things that we can look at.
02:55So when you say have a Carnival mentality, they are correct.
02:59And that Carnival mentality is what we should be really building into our systems because people who are serious about
03:06Carnival get stuff done in an amazing and efficient way.
03:12Ronasa Cutting, TV6 News.
03:14.
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