Pan endangered

The problems that beset Pan Trinbago in October 2018 remain unresolved at the end of the term in office of current president Beverley Ramsey-Moore.

Mrs Ramsey-Moore has presided over a continuing debacle in the organisation's spotty history, leading on Monday to protesting players and bandleaders meeting locked and chained gates at the organisation's Duke Street office.

The Pan Trinbago president is insistent that her executive, which has been extensively overhauled since she was voted into office, is operating legally.

In January 2020, the president reshuffled her executive, moving Keith Simpson from the position of trustee to vice president, making Lauren Pierre, the assistant secretary a trustee and moving Carlon Harewood from the vice president's position to the post of assistant secretary.

The changes were announced as switching of assignments among the elected executive.

In August 2021, Mr Harewood resigned from the Pan Trinbago executive, prompting Mrs Ramsey-Moore to note that she had "asked for his resignation letter since January of 2020."

By November 2021, treasurer-elect Gerard Mendez had resigned, writing a letter to Newsday noting his "utter disgust at the reappointment of Beverley Ramsey-Moore to the NCC."

The dissenting members of Pan Trinbago point out that a constitutionally mandated convention was due by October 2021.

Mrs Ramsey-Moore has declined to hold a convention virtually and insists that 70 per cent of the membership agreed to postpone the convention and election.

Pan Trinbago continues limited operations in deep debt and there was no allocation to special interest groups in 2021 when Carnival was cancelled.

In a startling move in March 2021, the national steelband body under its president's direction announced a reimagination of the long abandoned land and building at Trincity – which NCC chairman Winston "Gypsy" Peters described "as an eyesore" – as an agricultural project titled rather whimsically, Project Plant Trinbagrow.

Meanwhile, the organisation has occupied a building rent-free at the corner of Melbourne and Duke Street for the last 18 months on the sufferance of its owner, senior counsel Israel Khan.

These issues simmer to a boil at a sensitive time for steelbandsmen, who have their first opportunity in almost two years to perform for a live audience in a series of appearances as part of the Taste of Carnival for which registration will close on Wednesday.

When steelbandsmen should be working with unified purpose to make the most of this performance opportunity, the movement finds itself again dramatically divided with some calling for a boycott of the events.

Pan Trinbago's president came to power with a promise to improve the circumstances of the steelband movement.

Can she honestly evaluate the results of her term in office and the scrappy circumstances of her current appointment and claim to have achieved any of her goals?