Nicholas Clarke

Min­is­ter of Sports Anil Roberts yes­ter­day hit back at of­fi­cials of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion and T&T Hock­ey Board fol­low­ing crit­i­cism of his Min­istry re­gard­ing fund­ing for their teams' par­tic­i­pa­tion at re­cent for­eign com­pe­ti­tions.

Al­le­ga­tions were made that late pay­ments by the Min­istry forced T&T's Un­der 15 foot­ball team to with­draw from a Con­ca­caf tour­na­ment in the Cay­man Is­lands and the T&T se­nior hock­ey team's trip to the Pan Amer­i­can Field Hock­ey Cham­pi­onships in Cana­da was jeop­ar­dised be­cause of a lack of sup­port from the Min­istry.

Speak­ing at the Min­istry's of­fice in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, Roberts claimed that the or­gan­i­sa­tions had failed to fol­low prop­er pro­ce­dure for re­quest­ing funds by sub­mit­ting late pro­pos­als and lat­er laid the blame on the Min­istry for their own "in­com­pe­tence."

"Late­ly I have seen a trend where when you are un­der pres­sure, when you are in­com­pe­tent, you blame the Min­istry," he said. "I would like these NG­Bs to un­der­stand that there are rules for ac­cess­ing tax­pay­ers mon­ey... There is no in­com­pe­tence fund for peo­ple who can­not bud­get prop­er­ly, so don't blame us. The re­spon­si­bil­i­ty falls on the same peo­ple who are talk­ing but it is my turn to talk now."

The Min­is­ter ex­plained that the com­pli­cat­ed and time-con­sum­ing pro­ce­dure did not al­low for re­quests to be made just ahead of a team's de­par­ture.

"Every sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion, ear­ly in the year, by March or April, must present their wish­list, their bud­get for the up­com­ing fis­cal pe­ri­od. Af­ter this we sit down here at the Min­istry and go through what is pos­si­ble and what is not... It's a very long process to deal with pub­lic funds so when peo­ple like the TTFA send a re­quest on such short no­tice, it is ab­solute­ly lu­di­crous. Let me say that the TTFA nev­er, on their ini­tial bud­get, put any­thing about the Un­der 15 tour­na­ment in the Cay­man Is­lands or Mars or any­where on this plan­et or the uni­verse. They then made a very late re­quest on Ju­ly 31 for a tour­na­ment that was due to be­gin in Au­gust. That is in­com­pe­tence of the high­est or­der."

De­spite the late re­quest by the TTFA, Roberts said the Min­istry tried its best, in the in­ter­est of the ath­letes, to put things in place though trou­ble book­ing flights had blocked them in the end. He al­so not­ed that the TTFA, with­out in­form­ing the Min­istry, had hired elite coach­es Leo Been­hakker and Stephen Hart for its se­nior na­tion­al team at a price tag in the range of $75,000 US per month.

"When you al­lo­cat­ed all that mon­ey to go to­wards the big boys, you did not care about chil­dren and then you came and made a late re­quest and came and blamed the Min­istry. Get your house in or­der and stop blam­ing the Min­istry."

Roberts al­so had harsh words for Pres­i­dent of the T&T Hock­ey Board Dou­glas Ca­ma­cho, who told the me­dia the board had strug­gled to re­ceive fund­ing for the na­tion­al team's trip to Cana­da af­ter putting in a re­quest weeks in ad­vance of the tour­na­ment. The Min­is­ter re­fut­ted his state­ments, claim­ing the Board's re­quest had been sub­mit­ted just four days ahead of T&T's first match on Au­gust 10.

"Mr Ca­ma­cho, who has been pres­i­dent of the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee and TTHB, who has been in­volved in sport for so long, does not even un­der­stand the sys­tem up to now. You can spend many years in a job and learn ab­solute­ly noth­ing and talk ab­solute rub­bish when you are ready," he said, pre­sent­ing the Board's let­ter dat­ed Au­gust 6. "First and fore­most, his state­ment about sev­er­al weeks is not true... Mr Ca­ma­cho has the au­dac­i­ty to at­tack the Min­istry for his to­tal ab­ject in­com­pe­tence, his mis­in­for­ma­tion, his be­ing a stranger to the truth. As a com­pe­tent pres­i­dent of a board you must un­der­stand the sys­tem and bud­get in ad­vance and if you can­not so do you should re­sign. Fur­ther more, he told an un­truth to the na­tion­al me­dia... I am deeply dis­turbed that some­body who has spent so much time in sport knows so lit­tle. Mr Ca­ma­cho when you are speak­ing please speak the truth. Our chil­dren are lis­ten­ing."

Roberts added that the Min­istry man­aged to scrape to­geth­er ap­prox­i­mate­ly $243,000 for the trip, dur­ing which T&T even­tu­al­ly won a bronze medal.

"We don't have any mon­ey sit­ting down here wait­ing to swipe a card to give Mr Dou­glas Ca­ma­cho four days be­fore a tour­na­ment be­cause he can­not do his job prop­er­ly so I call on the as­so­ci­a­tions to get more pro­fes­sion­al and if peo­ple like Mr Ca­ma­cho can­not han­dle it, come out and let some­body who can han­dle it do the job."