The Life Sport pro­gramme, in its orig­i­nal for­mat, no longer ex­ists.A mas­sive re­struc­tur­ing planned for the be­leagured pro­gramme ef­fec­tive­ly shuts down the whole ex­ist­ing sys­tem and gives the new line min­is­ter–Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith–iron con­trol over the mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar out­reach pro­gramme.Grif­fith takes con­trol of the pro­gramme even as Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai has ex­tend­ed the au­dit dead­line by an­oth­er two weeks.

"I ex­pect that the au­dit should be com­plet­ed in the next two weeks...A lot of work had to be done in ver­i­fy­ing pay­ments as well as in vis­it­ing the var­i­ous cen­tres," Howai said in an e-mail ex­change with the Sun­day Guardian on Fri­day.The Sun­day Guardian has learned that the au­dit­ing de­lay was due to Cen­tral Au­dit Unit in­ves­ti­ga­tors' fear of vis­it­ing some of the Life Sport cen­tres.Howai con­firmed that lack of se­cu­ri­ty has cre­at­ed a snag for the Life Sport au­dit.

"It did im­pact on the time tak­en," Howai said in re­sponse to e-mailed ques­tions.He said the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty "did ad­vise that se­cu­ri­ty should be pro­vid­ed and they did in fact pro­vide se­cu­ri­ty for cer­tain vis­its."The Sun­day Guardian has been told that the se­cu­ri­ty will speed up in­ves­ti­ga­tions and al­low the re­port to be com­plet­ed with­in the new two-week dead­line.De­spite the in­com­plete au­dit, Grif­fith is ex­pect­ed to of­fi­cial­ly take over the pro­gramme to­mor­row.

Howai said though Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar placed Life Sport un­der Grif­fith's min­istry sev­er­al weeks ago (dur­ing the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship four-year an­niver­sary gath­er­ing on May 24), Grif­fith was wait­ing on "for­mal Cab­i­net ap­proval be­fore he took over the pro­gramme."Grif­fith, in a text ex­change on Fri­day, con­firmed that he would be as­sum­ing full con­trol of the pro­gramme from to­mor­row."Yes. With ef­fect from Mon­day no pay­ment is to be made un­less this min­istry (Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty) ap­proves it," he said.

"If they buy a din­ner mint, I want to see that din­ner mint," Grif­fith said.The Sun­day Guardian un­der­stands that Grif­fith has al­ready planned sweep­ing changes which in­cludes the re­moval of the ex­ist­ing ex­ec­u­tive and man­age­ment. The lat­ter changes would on­ly hap­pen, how­ev­er, when Howai's au­dit is com­plet­ed.The Sun­day Guardian was in­formed that Grif­fith has made it known to those with­in the Life Sport pro­gramme that af­ter the au­dit is com­plet­ed he "in­tend­ed to clean up house."

The NEW Life Sport:

Li­aisons with Var­i­ous Sport­ing Fed­er­a­tions:

By work­ing with var­i­ous sport­ing fed­er­a­tions and as­so­ci­a­tions, the Life Sport pro­gramme will be able to iden­ti­fy qual­i­fied coach­es and train­ers. Life Sport would use its fund to re­tain those pro­fes­sion­als who would then be dis­trib­uted to the var­i­ous cen­tres to con­duct coach­ing clin­ics and help de­vel­op sport­ing skills. Such skills de­vel­op­ment would go be­yond the ac­tu­al play­ing of the sport to in­clude the of­fi­cial as­pect of the game, such as the ref­er­ee­ing of match­es and scor­ing of games.

It may al­so in­clude the lo­gis­ti­cal as­pect, in­clud­ing the prepa­ra­tion of pitch­es, fields and courts with the cor­rect mark­ings, and en­sur­ing that equip­ment is of the req­ui­site stan­dard. Be­sides the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee, oth­er fed­er­a­tions that may be ap­proached for col­lab­o­ra­tion in­clude the fol­low­ing:

? Na­tion­al Am­a­teur Ath­let­ic As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T

? T&T Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion

? T&T Crick­et Board of Con­trol

? T&T Hock­ey Board

? T&T Swim­ming As­so­ci­a­tion

? T&T Bad­minton As­so­ci­a­tion

? Na­tion­al Bas­ket­ball Fed­er­a­tion of T&T

? T&T Tar­get Archery Fed­er­a­tion

? T&T Am­a­teur Box­ing As­so­ci­a­tion

? T&T Ju­do As­so­ci­a­tion

? T&T Am­a­teur Gym­nas­tics As­so­ci­a­tion (TTA­GA)

? T&T Net­ball As­so­ci­a­tion

? T&T Rug­by Foot­ball Union

? T&T Ta­ble Ten­nis As­so­ci­a­tion

? Ten­nis As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T

? T&T Vol­ley­ball Fed­er­a­tion

There is al­so a pro­pos­al to have sport icons work with the youth in the pro­gramme to en­cour­age them to fol­low their dreams in var­i­ous sport­ing dis­ci­plines. Sev­er­al icons have al­ready of­fered their ser­vices and are ex­pect­ed to work along­side the cer­ti­fied coach­es and train­ers.

The re­vamped Life Sport will cov­er trou­bled ar­eas hav­ing at-risk youths, as well as be open to any youth that can ben­e­fit from this type of pro­gramme. Com­mu­ni­ties on the fringes of de­pressed com­mu­ni­ties will al­so be in­clud­ed. The pro­grammes will al­so tar­get old­er mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty who can be­come train­ers and coach­es not on­ly in the area of sports but in ar­eas such as ed­u­ca­tion, nu­tri­tion, hy­giene and gen­er­al wel­fare.

The Phys­i­cal Train­ing in­struc­tors (PTI) de­part­ment and sport teams of the De­fence Force will be heav­i­ly in­volved in mon­i­tor­ing this pro­gramme. It is en­vis­aged that the pres­ence of these De­fence Force men and women will pro­vide a safe­guard against in­fil­tra­tion by known gang mem­bers. De­fence Force per­son­nel will al­so en­sure that pro­gramme par­tic­i­pants and sup­port­ing staff are not in­tim­i­dat­ed or threat­ened, and they will act as mon­i­tors.

The De­fence Force will al­so in­fuse a mea­sure of dis­ci­pline in­to the par­tic­i­pants, and fos­ter the build­ing of traits ex­pect­ed from sport that are use­ful in every­day life, in­clud­ing punc­tu­al­i­ty, dis­ci­pline, uni­for­mi­ty, ad­her­ence to in­struc­tions, team­work and lead­er­ship, to name a few.