Renu­ka Singh

Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Sport, Ash­win Creed, in an e-mail ex­change with the Sun­day Guardian, says he has ac­cu­mu­lat­ed more than 250 days leave which he is util­is­ing. Af­ter this ends, Creed may be pro­ceed­ing on pre-re­tire­ment leave.Creed and oth­er min­istry of­fi­cials have dom­i­nat­ed the me­dia as, week af­ter week, more in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing the mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar Life Sport pro­gramme has come to the sur­face.

There were nu­mer­ous unan­swered ques­tions, in­clud­ing some with re­gard to Creed's pro­longed ab­sence from the job, in the light of the on­go­ing au­dit in­to the con­tentious pro­gramme.While many have at­trib­uted sin­is­ter rea­sons to Creed's ab­sence, with both Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley and for­mer min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Jack Warn­er claim­ing that Creed was out of the coun­try be­cause of threats to his life, Creed ex­plained his pro­longed ab­sence to the Sun­day Guardian.

"I have 33-and-a-third years ser­vice, and I have ac­cu­mu­lat­ed 250 days un­used leave since I have not tak­en leave for 12 years...I left on per­son­al and fam­i­ly busi­ness as I am en­ti­tled to do," he said."I am due to re­tire soon," Creed added, height­en­ing spec­u­la­tion that he may not have to re­turn to the PS job, but may pro­ceed from time off straight in­to pre-re­tire­ment leave be­fore ex­it­ing the pub­lic ser­vice.Creed said when he left the coun­try on May 13, 2014, there was no probe in­to the Life Sport pro­gramme.

"I could un­der­stand the furore if I had left the coun­try while the probe was al­ready un­der­tak­en. If the probe had been ini­ti­at­ed while I was still in the coun­try, I would not have left. There was no probe of the pro­gramme when I left the coun­try, and I am not go­ing to re­turn un­til I have com­plet­ed my busi­ness abroad, since I am en­ti­tled to my un­used leave," he said.He said de­spite re­ports that his ab­sence was hold­ing up the probe, he was not run­ning away from the au­dit. He was al­so will­ing to be in­ter­viewed, Creed said.

"I am not afraid of scruti­ny be­cause there were three pre­vi­ous au­dits un­der­tak­en. Two were un­der­tak­en by Cen­tral Au­dit and one by the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al. I presided over all three, and I am cer­tain­ly will­ing and pre­pared to make my­self avail­able for the fourth one. I stand ready to as­sist and to re­spond to the con­cerns of the au­di­tors," he said.De­spite the rash of neg­a­tive at­ten­tion the pro­gramme has been re­ceiv­ing re­cent­ly, Creed de­fend­ed the pro­gramme as a pos­i­tive one.

"The Life Sport pro­gramme is an evolv­ing pro­gramme. The pro­gramme is re­al­ly vir­gin ter­ri­to­ry and as the pro­gramme evolves, then changes can be made to it to meet the new changes. For ex­am­ple, when the pro­gramme start­ed it iden­ti­fied mu­si­cal tal­ent. "But as the pro­gramme de­vel­oped, it iden­ti­fied oth­er cre­ative ar­eas and there­fore the pro­gramme evolved to ac­com­mo­date those new and cre­ative de­mands.

"So to use the term 'keep the pro­gramme in its orig­i­nal for­mat' is un­du­ly re­stric­tive and will on­ly lock down the pro­gramme too nar­row­ly, which is not nec­es­sar­i­ly de­sir­able," he said.He re­fused to com­ment on the pro­grammes be­ing moved from his own line min­is­ter, Sport Min­is­ter Anil Roberts, to Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith.

"The de­ci­sion to move the pro­gramme to the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty (MNS) is a Cab­i­net pol­i­cy de­ci­sion. I am a pub­lic ser­vant, and it is not my place to com­ment on pol­i­cy de­ci­sions as a pub­lic ser­vant," he said.In a sub­se­quent e-mail, Creed added that it would be "hard to de­ter­mine any fall­out" as the pro­gramme moved from the Sport Min­istry to Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

"Every­thing de­pends on the vi­sion that MNS has for the pro­gramme and how they in­tend to ad­min­is­ter it. I can't pre­de­ter­mine the vi­sion of the MNS for the pro­gramme. But the pro­gramme, by its very na­ture, re­quires a holis­tic na­tion­al agen­da in trans­form­ing the lives of the 'at-risk' in the so­ci­ety. The best way to do this is to forge al­liances with civ­il so­ci­ety, NGOs and oth­er min­istries of gov­ern­ment. The un­der­ly­ing phi­los­o­phy of the Life Sport pro­gramme is na­tion build­ing for the fu­ture," he said.

When asked if his ab­sence would cause fur­ther harm to the pro­gramme and to deputy di­rec­tor Ruth Marchan, Creed said the strength of the Life Sport pro­gramme was not in the PS alone."The strength of the pro­gramme re­sides in the di­rec­tor, the two deputy di­rec­tors, the re­gion­al man­agers, the co-or­di­na­tors, and the coach­es who make up the whole cadre of per­sons who ad­min­is­ter the pro­gramme. The PS mere­ly gives over­sight to the pro­gramme," he said.

"The strength of the pro­gramme has al­so been in the par­tic­i­pants them­selves. They made the pro­gramme work. They em­braced the op­por­tu­ni­ty af­ford­ed to them for growth, and the co-or­di­na­tors and coach­es fa­cil­i­tat­ed this change process," he said.

"The for­mat that the pro­gramme adopts has to be de­ter­mined by and is de­pen­dent on its per­for­mance. So that as the pro­gramme evolves there is a re­search com­po­nent to track and as­sess the pro­gramme's de­vel­op­ment over time, which in­for­ma­tion would then in­form how the pro­gramme evolves. It was al­ways the in­ten­tion of the Life Sport pro­gramme to part­ner with oth­er stake­hold­ers. For in­stance, the Min­istries of Ed­u­ca­tion, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and So­cial De­vel­op­ment," he said.

"As the pro­gramme's vi­sion broad­ened over time, nat­u­ral­ly wider stake­hold­er dis­cus­sions would have had to be en­gaged in," he said. He al­so re­fused to com­ment on the al­leged plot to hurt Marchan and the mur­der of Cur­tis "Tall­man" Gib­son."Threats to Ms Marchan are a po­lice mat­ter and it is there­fore not pru­dent to spec­u­late," he said.Creed's at­tor­ney Pe­ter Tay­lor who fa­cil­i­tat­ed this in­ter­view is out of the coun­try on per­son­al busi­ness.