THE ninth Carifesta, which comes to an end this Sunday at the Hasely Crawford Stadium, Port of Spain has flopped.

And chairman of the organising committee Louis Lee Sing has admitted that it was a big mess.

Sources say that there were many challenges that faced the event in which more than 1,000 participants from 25 Caribbean countries took part over a one week period at various venues throughout Trinidad and Tobago.

Theme for this year’s Carifesta was “Celebrating Our People Contesting the World Stage”.

Performers from the various countries brought their music, dance, arts, film, visual and literary arts.

One member of the organising committee said the $29 million event had many deficiencies because the organisers did not have a clue how to stage such a show of that magnitude.

“From the opening night at the Hasely Crawford Stadium, the event was plagued with problems caused by mismanagement,” the source said.

During the week-long event, participants complained about a number of problems from food, transportation and the size of some of the booths to showcase their arts and craft.

“There was a lack of interest judging from the poor turn-out of patrons at some of the shows across the country,” added our source.

Lee Sing had to give away tickets to fill Queen’s Hall, which was one of the major venues for a number of shows, the source added.

Lee Sing also responded to claims that Carifesta was poorly-organised and that participants from the Caribbean countries were becoming frustrated and some of them wanted to return to their homeland.

He agreed that there were many deficiencies in staging the event and a post-mortem will be done to see what went wrong.

Lee Sing accused Joseph, who was critical of the event, of making it a bigger mess than it was.

He said there were many challenges confronting Carifesta, but noted that there were some positives out of the event.

The chairman did not reveal what was the positive side to Carifesta.

Suriname playwright, Sharda Ganga, had to cancel a play at the Central Bank because her production, “No More Stories”, was barred from the bank’s auditorium as it contained some obscene language.

“If you organise a festival and invite people throughout the Caribbean to perform, you must warn them before about what they can or cannot write,” she told reporters.

The French Guiana contingent packed up on Wednesday and moved out of their booth at Carifesta Village, at the Hasely Crawford Stadium and has since returned home.

Performers came from as far as Cuba, Belize and the Cayman Islands as well as Jamaica, Barbados, Guyana, Suriname, St. Lucia, Antigua, Grenada, St. Kitts and Martinique.

Carifesta was organised by the Ministry of Culture.