By: Precious Mills
BASSETERRE, St. Kitts (Friday 29th October 2021) – Recent comments made by Carnival Chairperson Shannon Hawley about in-person events for Sugar Mas 50 has been backed up by the Chairperson of the Disaster Mitigation Council, Attorney General Vincent Byron Jr., who says Hawley has made a “very powerful and strong case” for such to happen.
Speaking at the Prime Minister’s press conference on Thursday 28th October 2021, Byron talked about events that should be taking place shortly whereby fully-vaccinated patrons will be able to partake following Cabinet’sdecisions.
“…this week, with a very important a very comprehensive presentation made to the task force by the National Carnival Committee, the chair of that committee came and was very detailed in terms of the type of functions that we would to have that made a very powerful and strong case for us to start having calypso shows, tents shortly. They will be restricted in terms of the numbers who can be in person, again fully vaccinated but these would be streamlined, and so a lot functions that we’ll be having over the next few weeks leading up to carnival . It’s a very important year-number 50.”
He continued: “a lot of them would be virtual, will have limited numbers of in-person fully vaccinated people as we had done with CPL being allowed to go and that we are still very concerned about street activities, and these are still at this point in time still on. We believe that we restrict those street activities but it is important to understand that we also want our entertainers; those people who ply their trade to begin the opportunity to play on stage, to play in controlled environments, and the Cabinet shortly will be making those types of determinations how far we can go.”
While appearing in an interview segment before the start of the Sugar Mas Song Contest aired live at ZIZ TV studio on Friday 22nd October, Hawley was quizzed by host popular DJ and media personality Sweet Sister Sensia on the subject of what can be expected for Sugar Mas 50.
The Carnival Chairperson’s response was: “I think last year for the virtual edition, people were blown away, and as the [Carnival] Minister [Jonel Powell] said, we were able to reach people not just locally [but] regionally [and] internationally-all around the world.”
She continued: “We had over seventy hundred and fifty thousand (750,000) viewers logged on in 2020 so this year, what we intend to do is build on that virtual experience. However, we have been in negotiations, discussions, we’re jumping through hoops and hurdles, and we think that we have managed to convince the authorities that we are able to host in-person events safely and healthily under the pandemic so very shortly next week we will be releasing a full calendar of activities for Sugar Mas 50 and we will be including live events…”