National Calypso Queen Challenge Edition goes on

The National Calypso Queen Challenge Edition scheduled to be held on April 25 at Queen’s Hall, St Ann’s will continue as planned its organisers say.

The National Women’s Action Committee (NWAC) hosts the event annually but could not this year because of the covid19 pandemic and the cancellation of Carnival 2021. It, however, decided to host a challenge edition which would see the top three from this event moving on to the 2022 competition.

However, there were new fears that the challenge edition might not have been able to go on because of new restrictions imposed by the Government because of rising covid19 cases. Both NWAC and the National Parang Association of TT held emergency meetings on Wednesday to discuss the fate of the events.

The Government announced on April 14 a rollback of public health measures for a period of 21 days. The measures took effect from 12 am on April 15.

The measures include a ban on in-house dining at restaurants, bars, casinos and a reduction in the number of people allowed to gather in public from ten people to five.

The National Parang Association of TT (NPATT) also had some events planned to celebrate its 50th anniversary including a church service, a gala event and a national parang caravan.

NPATT’s PRO Irvys Juarez said, “The National Parang Association of TT held an emergency meeting yesterday (Wednesday) and we have decided to postpone the event.”

Juarez said the awardees were the association’s priority as they fell within the at-risk group.

The association’s gala event was scheduled to take place on April 19 at Queen’s Hall during which it would have also launched its Orquesta Nacional de Parang de Trinidad y Tobago (ONPaTT).

Instead both the orchestra’s launch and the gala will now take place on June 9 at Queen’s Hall from 7 pm.

She said the association was, however, going ahead with the church service on April 18 at the Church of the Assumption, Long Circular Road, Maraval.

“That is going to be restricted to just the parranderos to come in, depending on the amount of people allowed in the church.”

As for the caravan, Juarez said the association was still in the process of discussing it but more than likely it might go on.

She said it might because it was not making any stops nor encouraging gatherings. It was simply the caravan driving through villages like San Juan and Lopinot among others.

Queen’s Hall general manager Garfield George said in a Newsday article on Wednesday that there were no changes in terms of planned events.

He then said that the hall had already taken steps and decisions as to how the events held there would be conducted including physical distancing, sanitising upon entry, temperature checks and people being ushered to their seats using the hall’s seat-mapping process.