BASSETERRE, St. Kitts - ONE of the major promises for this year’s Sugar Mas’ celebration was the inauguration of a Sugar Mas Village, which was expected to serve as an action avenue all day long during the Carnival season.
However, the venue, which was located behind the National Museum, did not meet expectations due to various glitches beyond the Carnival Committee’s control.
In an exclusive interview with SKNVibes, Carnival Chairman Sylvester Anthony claimed that the weather and the lack of resources were some of the factors that led to the cancelation of most of the events scheduled for the Village.
“Because of circumstances, it did not achieve what we wanted it to, mostly because of the weather and also because of limited resources; because those who were available could not have been everywhere.”
He however indicated that some events were successful, including all Semi-Finals.
“We had some good events there and those events were successful, but for the daily activity it just did not work out. We have to go back to the drawing board.
“We were able to have all the Semi-Finals there. We were able to have our folklore groups down there and a couple of bands played there, but we did not have the things we wanted to have to keep people focused down there. We had perhaps 60 percent of what we wanted. For me, 80 percent is good...60 percent is not good!”
Anthony acknowledged that other events also failed due to competition from Party Central, which forced the Committee to cancel some of them.
“For example, we had intended to have events at evenings but once Party Central got on stream it did not make sense. We had anything there and, with the weather being unsettled as it was, we had to pull back some.”
He however stated that for future Carnival activities their focus would be to secure a venue that would be able to host events without the weather ever having to be a factor.
