Aneesa is back on the board of the FMC

Aneesa Oumarally is back.

Aneesa Oumarally

The former CEO of the Festival Management Committee (FMC) which runs the annual Toronto Caribbean Carnival, had “stepped down” last month.

Now Omarally is returning to the FMC  – but as a member of the board, a position in which she had previously served.

She joins four  new board members, most of them well known in Toronto’s mas’ playing community. They are Horace Bhopalsingh, an accountant, Nicole Aikman-Smith, a marketing executive, Laverne Adele Garcia, an attorney and Stacey Rodriguez, a businesswoman.

Oumarally,an attorney, and the four new members of the board “have been offered  two year appointments,”said FMC chair, Joe Halstead, and together with the others currently on the board, ” we have a ten-person team.”

The other board members are retired deputy police chief, Keith Forde, tax expert Earlene Huntley, former Trinidad and Tobago’s Consul General Michael Lashley, Calypso organizer Angela Pierre and Joe Halstead

“ These are very difficult times so we have recruited quality people who have skills sets that we need to deal with a very uncertain future,” Halstead told The Caribbean  Camera in  announcing the appointment of the new board members.

“We now have a much younger board than in years past,” said Halstead. He noted that there are now an equal number of men and women running the Festival.

Now handling the  day-to-day operations of the FMC   are Chris Alexander, Denise Herrera Jackson and Eddison Doyle

At the FMC’s  recent annual general meeting, five committees were struck to deal with” the different Pandemic-created challenges’.

These groups will be looking at “everything from creating a code of conduct, financial

planning and the nitty-gritty of planning for a festival that may be restricted in terms of how

big it will be allowed to be and where it will be held.”

“For financial reasons,” the FMC will be moving its headquarters next month. 

For almost a decade the FMC’s offices have been in a large complex on Waterman Avenue, west of the Bermondsey Road and O’Conner Drive intersection in East York.

“ We will now be  only a few doors down from our current home, across from the Toronto Police (garages),”  said Halstead.

The move will take place at the end of  October.