Similarly, at the Bonnasse Old Jetty car park in Cedros, Carnival Committee Secretary Coreece Wilson told the Express that a crowd resembling 10,000 had made their way to the “incident-free” festivities.

Though there was only one participating band, she said, residents had done their part in participating, moving jovially throughout the area.

“We had one of the better Jouverts in a long time. People came out, and had a good time, despite all the negative things that were happening. The crowds were massive.
We usually have the largest Jouvert in the south-western district,” Wilson said.

“The police presence was great; they were really cooperative too. We had police, soldiers and coast guard as well. They were able to control the crowd, and that is why we were more or less incident-free. It has always been our theme for a small community in the South-West. We’ve had a better showing at Carnival activities; we have most of the traditional mas, kiddies and Jouvert,” she added.

Both Wilson and Omalo however said their respective committees received funding from the National Carnival Committee (NCC) a mere three days prior to the Jouvert events.

Omalo said that the Mayaro Committee had pre-emptively worked on promised contracts with their suppliers to avoid running out of time.

“We got our funds; we had an issue with the cheque, and we got ours on Friday around 2.p.m. We did not wait on funding; we knew it was coming, so the last week before Carnival when nothing was taking place, we did contracts with persons and suppliers we knew we needed this weekend. We dealt with them, and interacted with them. We knew we sent in a budget, and we would get approval, we had our show continue to go on,” she said.

Wilson said that the Cedros Committee was left in a rush to secure infrastructure and services within the community.

“It was a bit difficult for us to find resources at the last minute; we got the cheque after lunch on Friday, and we had to basically pull a rabbit out of a hat between Friday and today. The funding we got was not sufficient; they basically cut our budget in half. We had to work magic with the resources that we had; we have service providers we are owing.

“We did the best with what we had, and it was successful. We did the best with what we had. I wish the NCC would look into showing the support they put into real communities, a lot of people prefer to stay closer to home instead of the main Port of Spain showing,” she said. (Trinidad Express)