March 28, 2024, 04:34:13 AM

Author Topic: Trini Exodus  (Read 2240 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline zuluwarrior

  • Hero Warrior
  • *****
  • Posts: 3048
  • use your tongue to count your teeth
    • View Profile
    • http://pointalive.com
Trini Exodus
« on: February 14, 2007, 06:48:12 PM »
WE'RE LEAVING!

Crime forces citizens abroad for Carnival

Carolyn Kissoon South Bureau


Tuesday, February 13th 2007
 
 
 More than 55,000 people are leaving Trinidad for the long Carnival weekend.

It is the biggest exodus from mas they have ever experienced, travel agents said yesterday.

Since last weekend, all flights to a number of Caribbean countries, Fort Lauderdale in Miami and to New York were fully booked, they said.

"It is practically impossible to book a flight to a number of places now... not until after Carnival," said one agent.

The upward trend of flying out for Carnival began "about four years ago" and most agents reported a 40 per cent increase in travellers this year over last year. Official figures show that last year, some 35,000 people took flight from Carnival.

Wayne Rodriguez, president of the Travel Agents' Association, said Trinidadians have developed a trend of leaving the country during the Carnival weekend.

"Despite the increase in fares to Caribbean islands the flights are all full for the next week. For example, the cost of going to Barbados is now $2,300, an increase of $1,300, and we are all sold out," he said.

For businessman, Shane Ali, after playing mas for more than 12 years, he and his wife, Narissa, have decided to steer clear from the celebrations and take a romantic trip to the Bahamas. He said: "I really did not want to leave Trinidad at this time, but the country has changed so much. We can no longer feel safe playing mas. Last year while I was jumping up in a band someone tried to kidnap me.

"I was dragged through a crowd of people and walked through a dark alley. The men then saw two police officers and got scared. That was when they told me to run, but promised that they will come back for me."

Ali, who operates a furniture store in Central Trinidad, said: "To prevent anything like that from happening again I told my wife that we should just leave for the weekend. We love Carnival, but the crime has just gotten out of control."

Another Carnival traveller, Sean Seemungal, of La Romaine, said: "I played mas for the past three years but I have just started a family. I am not into Carnival anymore. I will be travelling with my family. Carnival is not what it used to be."

But there is also a jump in the number of people . what ah thing .
 
.
good things happening to good people: a good thing
good things happening to bad people: a bad thing
bad things happening to good people: a bad thing
bad things happening to bad people: a good thing

Offline TriniCana

  • Hero Warrior
  • *****
  • Posts: 7557
  • ah Catch ah Glad
    • View Profile
    • allyuhmuddaass@com
Re: Trini Exodus
« Reply #1 on: February 14, 2007, 07:30:19 PM »
zulu are the planes coming in Trinidad full also?

i also read somewhere that only Harts are sold out.
other mas houses complained that their sales of costumes were poor
others said that they hope the sales pick up during the last weeks before carnival.
that was a month ago.

last week and this week should be collection of costumes, yet i haven't heard anyting about sales...

Offline socachatter

  • ey boy look ah make
  • Hero Warrior
  • *****
  • Posts: 726
    • View Profile
Re: Trini Exodus
« Reply #2 on: February 15, 2007, 05:49:31 AM »
Howard Chin LEE saying it have an increase in arrivals bit the same travel agents man saying that cannot be cause they just not seeing it.  Caribbean Airlines have ah tink 4500 seats less to offer and there aren't any charters coming in either.  so he challenge Chin Lee on that.  might be in the papers today.
"Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority.  The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong.  All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who doubted current moral values, not of men who tried to enforce them."

Offline dcs

  • Hero Warrior
  • *****
  • Posts: 5032
  • T&T 4 COP
    • View Profile
    • Warrior Nation
Re: Trini Exodus
« Reply #3 on: February 15, 2007, 08:33:23 AM »
TravelSpan flight from Ft lauderdale today was about 3/4 full.
Good bit of empty seats for Carnival Thursday.

I think Continental flights full but they doh fly everyday.

Ato in the papers today saying he not feeling the Carnival vibez.

Offline dcs

  • Hero Warrior
  • *****
  • Posts: 5032
  • T&T 4 COP
    • View Profile
    • Warrior Nation
NOT THIS CARNIVAL
« Reply #4 on: February 18, 2007, 01:12:57 PM »
Trinidad & Tobago Newsday
Sunday, February 18 2007
NOT THIS CARNIVAL

SUZANNE MILLS


It’s my favourite song of the 2007 crop, but nevertheless the sweet, sweet melody and amusing lyrics of Machel’s “One More Time” can’t move me enough to tap even my right big toe. I admit I’ve never been a winer girl, a Carnival baby, the life of the fete, but I have been known to take a little jump up from time to time. This year — a bumper soca season of tunes of slower rhythm and sharper expression, with young bright artistes mixing soca with this and with that, taking it more mainstream, producing music that will not lose its shelf life after Carnival — and I can’t muster a chip.

I wonder at the source of this listlessness. Why can’t I catch the spirit as easily as in other years? Maybe it’s because there’s simply nothing to jump up about. I don’t mean to be a party pooper this Carnival Sunday morning, to sour anyone’s lime, but really this country has little to celebrate. And I don’t know that this is the instant for us to indulge in escapism either.

For the first time ever I feel that we should be serious enough about stopping the undeniable and unacceptable decline and decay apparent in so many areas of TT society that we should halt the fete, skip the Carnival.

Should we truly be waving our rags in fete after fete or should we be protesting the inability of our police to arrest anyone for murder or to make the charges stick? Should we be having one more wine when our justice system is in crisis, when crime has made us prisoners in our own homes? And should we really expect our complaints to be taken seriously when the party is over? Will we be surprised or offended if after Carnival the Government ignores us because it has concluded we can’t be too badly off if we can fete so?

Or maybe I’m blue because Carnival is now principally about this-inclusive party and that exclusive fete. Fete promotion is now bigger than the shows and it is big business concentrated in the hands of a few. And while the fetes possess assorted themes and a myriad of culinary and alcoholic attractions, they are really quite culturally empty. Their sole contribution to nation is that they provide soca artistes with guaranteed revenue. Meanwhile fete promoters pocket millions. Currency in exchange for culture.

But come to think of it, the entire festival like its host nation is centred on money. Just look at how this Government decided it could buy the spirit of Carnival. Millions have been thrown at Carnival organisations to make them agree to abandon the Savannah and its Grand Stand for less comfortable pastures. As for any band leader or calypsonian, other than Bodyguard who might have been disgruntled with this administration’s unreasonable behaviour, Cabinet sought to mute dissent by increasing allocations for Band of the Year and for the Calypso Monarch. Money in the opinion of this Government is the sure cure all.

Maybe I don’t feel like dancing because I can’t forget the millions which have been spent needlessly to construct stands and to prepare Skinner Park and other venues for shows when the Grand Stand is still standing. No doubt, no doubt at all, a few PNM contractors have well benefited from this 2007 season even if many of TT’s citizens have felt a sense of emotional and/or cultural loss. No doubt the PNM in this an election year has been more than willing to trade the political points it may gain in San Fernando and environs by taking pan south for the goodwill it might have forfeited in north Trinidad as a result of the controversial move. No doubt it feels it has the north safely in its electoral grasp, even if pan players and supporters, the majority from north Trinidad and the east-west corridor, have been complaining bitterly about the inconvenience of the run south.

Otherwise, media reports indicate that despite the monies spent on the

alternative venues, these have suffered from insufficient and unflattering lighting and sound and uncomfortable seating which have turned audiences away from shows as central to Carnival as Panorama and the King and Queen

Competition. Ticket sales for Skinner Park Panorama finals up to Friday were slow. And no one in this high-handed administration cares about or will admit to the hatchet job it has done on Carnival 2007 or that this Carnival might just be a repeat of the flop that was the 2006 Carifesta when Carnival 2K7 should have been a huge success, coming as it did on the heels of TT’s exposure last year at the World Cup in Germany. But the PNM said it would shift Carnival from the Big Yard this year and so it has. The price: a few million dollars well and some broken hearts and spirits.

So, a little jump, a chip, a wine? Not this time.

smills@newsday.co.tt

TrinInfinite

  • Guest
Re: Trini Exodus
« Reply #5 on: February 18, 2007, 01:39:20 PM »
Its a sign of the times, people should heed the words of many who are leaving and distancing themselves from our homeland, it shows we need radical change and a new approach, new leaders and visionaries that are ready to fight the corrupt powers that be and put an end to their rein of tyranny over our nation..

God is de BOSS...

Offline zuluwarrior

  • Hero Warrior
  • *****
  • Posts: 3048
  • use your tongue to count your teeth
    • View Profile
    • http://pointalive.com
Re: Trini Exodus
« Reply #6 on: February 18, 2007, 08:17:33 PM »
yuh know sometin strange bout dis , if 55.000 people really leavin dem house for true well dem bandits will have ah field day . ah jus field that iz ah next propaganda to skear foreigner who comin for carnival . ah doh believe it .
.
good things happening to good people: a good thing
good things happening to bad people: a bad thing
bad things happening to good people: a bad thing
bad things happening to bad people: a good thing

Offline doc

  • Hero Warrior
  • *****
  • Posts: 1518
  • ...game, set, match.
    • View Profile
Re: Trini Exodus
« Reply #7 on: February 18, 2007, 09:09:37 PM »
yuh know sometin strange bout dis , if 55.000 people really leavin dem house for true well dem bandits will have ah field day . ah jus field that iz ah next propaganda to skear foreigner who comin for carnival . ah doh believe it .
No mad rush to leave T&T, says Imbert

Anna Ramdass


Friday, February 16th 2007


There is no mad rush of people leaving Trinidad and Tobago for Carnival, Transport Minister Colm Imbert said yesterday.

Imbert attended yesterday's post-Cabinet press conference yesterday to clear the air on an Express report which quoted travel agents as saying that 55,000 people were leaving the country for Carnival, mainly because of crime.

Imbert denied these figures saying that they were "wildly exaggerated" as "common sense will dictate that this is physically impossible".

According to the statistics provided by the Airports Authority the average departures daily range at about 2,000 and this included regular, business and vacation travellers.

He said if 55,000 persons were to leave the country for Carnival weekend, it would mean that over 400 plane loads of people will have to take off from Piarco International Airport which is not possible.

Imbert said in 2005 from February to March a total of 155,000 persons departed and in 2006 a total of 140,000 in the same period.

He stressed that 55,00 persons cannot leave the country on a Carnival weekend. Imbert stated that the figures presently show that approximately 45 flights per day are scheduled to depart from Piarco over the Carnival weekend for foreign destinations with a total capacity of approximately 6,000 persons per day, assuming that each plane would be 100 per cent full.

Courtesy of Trinidad Express - Febraury 16th, 2006
Live large and prosper!

Offline dcs

  • Hero Warrior
  • *****
  • Posts: 5032
  • T&T 4 COP
    • View Profile
    • Warrior Nation
Re: Trini Exodus
« Reply #8 on: February 18, 2007, 11:31:02 PM »

hmmmm...who to believe...Imbert or Travel Agents.


Truth is a hell of a ting to find in T&T these days.  U would think FACTS would not be questionable but serious smoke screen everywhere....even down to football.

I eh go forget.....when the real information come out I eh go forget.

Offline ann3boys

  • Hero Warrior
  • *****
  • Posts: 867
    • View Profile
Re: Trini Exodus
« Reply #9 on: February 21, 2007, 11:52:04 AM »
here's the puzzle. If we can get 50,000 persons into T & T why can't we get 55,000 out. Isn't it the same planes? Doesn't a plane that comes in have to get back out? seems to be simple arithmetic to me.

 

1]; } ?>