(TRINIDAD GUARDIAN) — The Fi­nance Min­istry re­leased $25 mil­lion two weeks ago to the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) for Car­ni­val 2019 and the NCC yes­ter­day re­quest­ed an ad­di­tion­al sum of $73 mil­lion.

Cul­ture Min­is­ter Nyan Gadsb -Dol­ly con­firmed this in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day re­ply­ing to Op­po­si­tion queries from UNC sen­a­tor Wade Mark.

She said funds are re­leased by the Fi­nance Min­istry to the NCC up­on re­quest. She added: “Re­cent­ly in the last two weeks, $25 mil­lion was re­quest­ed and re­leased and an­oth­er re­quest was made (yes­ter­day) for an­oth­er tranche of mon­ey to be re­leased for Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions and (this) will cer­tain­ly be processed as ex­pe­di­tious­ly as pos­si­ble.”

Gads­by-Dol­ly said the re­quest for the sec­ond tranche was in the sum of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $73 mil­lion. Once ob­tained it will bring to a to­tal of $98 mil­lion, NCC’s re­ceived from The Min­istry of Fi­nance for Car­ni­val 2019.

On oth­er queries about tourist safe­ty for Car­ni­val, Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor Clarence Ramb­harat said the Po­lice Ser­vice and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies have been plan­ning for Car­ni­val 2019 in the past few months.

He said the Po­lice Ser­vice deals with an ad­di­tion­al in­flux of tourists for Car­ni­val an­nu­al­ly and has “suf­fi­cient ex­pe­ri­ence “ to plan for ad­di­tion­al num­bers of tourists this sea­son.

“There are al­ways greater po­lice re­spons­es and De­fence Force per­son­nel at Car­ni­val and this year it will be no dif­fer­ent. Threat as­sess­ments are con­tin­u­ous­ly be­ing done and op­er­a­tions for Car­ni­val are al­ways be­ing fine-tuned,” he said.

He said the Po­lice Ser­vice has been li­ais­ing with Car­ni­val par­ty pro­mot­ers and band lead­ers to im­ple­ment safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty for events and pa­rades.

On a po­ten­tial in­crease in the spread of malar­ia cur­rent­ly, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ing said an in­ter-min­is­te­r­i­al team has been li­ais­ing with Liv­ing Wa­ters Com­mu­ni­ty which deals with mi­grant pop­u­la­tions— es­pe­cial­ly Venezue­lans among whom cas­es were found— to iden­ti­fy peo­ple with the dis­ease.

He said spray­ing was done in ar­eas and blood sam­ples are be­ing tak­en. Deyals­ingh said med­ical screen­ing— not in­va­sive blood tests— are done at ports of en­try.