The government hopes to triple the number of seats available for Junkanoo spectators in the future, according to Prime Minister Perry Christie.
“I am sort of more and more perplexed by the need to find a better way of accommodating our people. There is not enough room for the (number) of people who would like to come and comfortably enjoy Junkanoo,” he told The Bahama Journal on Tuesday.
“I am hearing complaints about people who are coming here and not having the seat that they purchased and I don’t understand that but it is happening. We have to find a way to overcome these difficulties and I think the answer must be as we move into the future to try and find another way to accommodate Junkanoo, another place, another venue, to seat 30,000 people comfortably.”
Potential venues include the new national stadium being paid for by the Chinese government. However, the prime minister said that would depend on how far the crowd would be away from the Junkanoo participants “because you don’t want them too far away.”
Said Mr. Christie: “Alternatively, we may – like Trinidad – recognise that this is such an integral part of our culture, and build a special place for Junkanoo where you are able to build the features, in that you would have the sound, because the buildings magnify the sound and we can actually reproduce that some place else.
“I just think this is going to be a major issue for us. As the population gets larger and there are 200,000 people on this island we are about to have a dynamic improvement in hotels-and it would seem to be such an awful pity if we couldn’t take everything into consideration and be able to have our culture exposed in a much more meaningful way to people, including Bahamians and non-Bahamians.”
The Junkanoo Corporation rented the bleachers for the Junkanoo parade from C-Cube and according to the company’s spokesperson Peter Adderley, approximately 10,000 seats were put up along the route.
“The challenge will always be the same – a population with over 300,000 people and (there are) only 10,000 seats,” said Mr. Adderley.
“When you look at the range in prices. A $75 item is a lot of money, when minimum wage is $150, so somehow we are going to have to find the will to examine this venue.”
According to police officers along the East and Shirley Streets route, after midnight the bleachers reverted to open seating, allowing spectators without tickets to rest after a night spent watching and waiting for their favourite groups to pass.
One family of six told The Bahama Journal they had to wait for hours for the bleachers to clear before they could be seated, even though they bought their tickets the first day they went on sale.
“This year we had a problem with the bleachers. There were no seats available and we had to wait until about 3am, which was about two-and-a-half to three hours, until the first lap finished and that’s when we got a seat,” said Keva Rolle.
However, Lilamae Williams said she arrived to her assigned seat opposite the Cabinet parking lot at 8pm and experienced no problems.
By: Tosheena Robinson-Blair, The Bahama Journal
