SINT MAARTEN (PHILIPSBURG) – The St. Maarten Carnival Development Foundation (SCDF) on Wednesday said that in the wake of yet another postponement of Carnival festivities it will move to restructure, partially re-brand and re-examine all relationships with Carnival. After celebrating 50 years in 2019 and based on certain developments recently, the foundation views this as the perfect time to reset.
“We can spend all day and night going back and forth but as the old saying goes everything happens for a reason and although we would have preferred to host Carnival for the people and our stakeholders, we cannot sit and lament. We are disappointed but we move forward as we always have and we prepare for the next staging Carnival,” the SCDF said, adding that as usual preparations for the following festival will commence immediately especially with a reset in mind.
“We have already engaged a local professional brand development company to project manage our way forward and all develop our supplementary services that we believe will further elevate the festival.
Regarding stakeholder relationships, the SCDF noted that there are areas that require addressing in each specific relationship, from booths to promoters to troupes to corporate sponsors. This does not mean a one-sided review, the foundation said, but a complete review of policies.
“With corporate sponsors for example we will maintain our approach to how we manage our relationship with them, despite public statements. We have never discussed our confidential contractual obligations with corporate sponsors publicly and that won’t change. We believe this is the ethical thing to do. We have seen times, including recently, when this is not reciprocated but that does not influence how we choose to operate. We will deal with our corporate partners internally but we always have to keep in mind that are also sponsors of troupes, booths, and concerts so we have more than the foundation to think about,” the SCDF explained.
The foundation also re-iterated that all season passes purchased is still valid for when Carnival is held. It also asked the general public to cooperate with promoters, troupe leaders ect to whom they have already paid funds. Promoters and troupe leaders, the foundation explained, have their specific ways of either ensuring that tickets ect are still valid or making refunds.
“We ask that you have some patience in understanding that COVID-19 has changed everything for these stakeholders who have already invested funds that were paid. Everyone is working towards realistic and amicable solutions. Please extend patience and cooperation,” the foundation said.
Extensive Plan/Mass testing
The foundation said it put months of work into a health and safety plan for Carnival 2021 knowing that it would be held against a COVID-19 backdrop. “We are very proud of the plan we put together and if we had the opportunity to roll-out all other initiatives, we believe we would have given the country a unique opportunity for testing ect through Carnival (see related story). What we do know is that we had the most extensive health and safety plan announced on St. Maarten since the start of COVID. We put a lot of work into it and the public didn’t even see all of it,” the foundation said.
“As explained, when we launched our COVID-19 Safety Measures on January 22nd, it is a working document and the SCDF will continue to develop the idea of executing a safe carnival during the global pandemic. We opened up an email address to take suggestions from the public since everyone is being so vocal on social media and we continued to meet stakeholders and speak to experts on the subject.
“Unfortunately, we were not given the chance to reveal our advanced plan which would focus on using the two weeks of Carnival to also serve the community as a mass testing event. We have seen the government try different strategies to test more people including a drive-through testing area near the harbor. We planned on presenting to CPS ideas and scenarios to give incentives to Carnival lovers to get rapid tested at the village (for free with help of a sponsor) during the two weeks of Carnival, which would be measures added to the temperature screening, sanitization at the village’s gates, social distancing of picnic tables and the testing and re-testing of all the persons working in the village.
“The plan would have outlined the process of what happens when someone entering the Village is found to possibly have covid-19 symptoms, they would be isolated from the socially distanced line with the persons they came with and tested nearby, if this person is found to be positive they are immediately taken home to quarantine and contact tracing begins, removing the threat not just from the village but from society. We believe this strategy would have helped the country to get a better grip on the real situation. Could we have announced this sooner? Sure, however that would have been irresponsible to announce without working out the execution fully. Our meeting with CPS was scheduled for the first week of February.”
