Culture Secretary: October Carnival will be private sector driven

SECRETARY of Tourism, Culture, Antiquities and Transportation Tashia Burris says this year’s October carnival will be private-sector-driven.

At the post-executive council media briefing on April 17 at the Shaw Park Cultural Complex, Burris said planning for the event started in January.

She said all the post-mortems from last year have been done and all the stakeholders have been asked to contribute again.

“In fact, what you may find this year is that a lot of the work will be more private-sector-driven rather than being driven from the (Tobago) Festivals Commission wholly and solely.

“What we have is a central planning team who has been taking the recommendations from the stakeholders and from a wider cross-section of the public as to improvements that we can make to the festival this year, and that will inform the conceptual plan that will be decided upon by the end of this month.

“Once that plan is confirmed and agreed to by all of the stakeholders, the work of the planning team has ended and then the work of the implementation team will start.”

She said the conceptual plan will include all the structures and systems to be put in place to ensure there are seamless celebration from October 25-27.