Prepa­ra­tions for To­ba­go Car­ni­val 2025 are mov­ing full steam ahead, ac­cord­ing to the is­land’s Car­ni­val As­so­ci­a­tion. The as­so­ci­a­tion’s pres­i­dent said there was al­ready high­er mas­quer­ad­er reg­is­tra­tion com­pared to last year, de­spite the State of Emer­gency (SoE) cur­rent­ly in ef­fect.

The To­ba­go Car­ni­val As­so­ci­a­tion said it has not re­ceived any re­ports of neg­a­tive fall­out from bands or mas­quer­aders due to the SoE. In­stead, in­ter­est in this year’s event has been “re­al­ly en­cour­ag­ing”, with on­line reg­is­tra­tions al­ready sur­pass­ing last year’s fig­ures.

“As it re­lates to the an­nounce­ment of the SoE, so far, we don’t have any neg­a­tive im­pact re­port­ed from the mas bands,” the as­so­ci­a­tion’s pres­i­dent Dex­ter Sandy told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.