Min­is­ter of Sport Brent San­cho has im­ple­ment­ed new fund­ing poli­cies to en­sure that monies dis­trib­uted by the Min­istry of Sport and SPORTT to Na­tion­al Sport­ing Or­ga­ni­za­tion and oth­ers are well ac­count­ed for and used for what it was in­tend­ed.This ac­cord­ing to his ad­vis­er Kevin Har­ri­son, who said: "When we came in here it was al­ways a con­cern as to where the mon­ey was go­ing and what was need­ed to bring those ask­ing for funds to be ac­count­able.

"One of the sim­plest things we have done is to ask na­tion­al sport­ing as­so­ci­a­tions and oth­er na­tion­als ask­ing for as­sis­tance to send us a de­tailed list of what they need."We are al­so ask­ing them to send three ten­ders for the items they wish to get and then we go through it care­ful­ly and choose who should sup­ply. We then pay to the sup­pli­er di­rect­ly and not to the per­son or per­sons mak­ing the re­quest."

Har­ri­son who was once em­ployed with the Eng­lish Foot­ball Play­ers Union added: "Let me show an ex­am­ple, if the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) comes to us and tells us that they are send­ing a foot­ball team to let's say to Venezuela. We then ask them for the num­ber of play­ers and of­fi­cials that are go­ing to Venezuela and we will then say let's take care of the air­line tick­ets and the ac­com­mo­da­tion.

"We then pay to the ho­tel and the air­line di­rect­ly, so we pre­vent mon­ey go­ing for oth­er things that were not bud­get­ed for and hence in this case we can ac­count for tax­pay­ers dol­lars."An­oth­er strat­e­gy we are us­ing is to send mem­bers of our sport de­vel­op­ment staff to do site vis­its to make sure that funds are prop­er­ly used.

The min­is­ter has been very strict in this re­gard and he is ask­ing for reg­u­lar re­ports on things like these. If some­one comes and says they are host­ing a tour­na­ment, we look at it and we al­ways try to as­sist as best as we can. What we want to pre­vent is that monies are dis­bursed and then the event does not come off and some­one goes off with funds.

"We will have peo­ple go­ing around and mak­ing sure that the event comes off and that the mon­ey is well spent. The min­is­ter has made it clear that he wants prop­er ac­count­ing pro­ce­dures in place and al­though he has a keen in­ter­est in as­sist­ing with fund­ing through the min­istry, he wants to make sure that the mon­ey brings val­ue to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go."