Richard Lord

?What's the cost of the na­tion­al flag at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Port-of-Spain? Is it $2 mil­lion? But Sport and Youth Af­fairs Min­is­ter Gary Hunt, while un­able to con­firm the flag's price tag, said even if it was true, it would be "noth­ing out of the or­di­nary." The flag was un­veiled by Hunt at an of­fi­cial cer­e­mo­ny on Au­gust 4. He said then the flag was in­tend­ed to be seen from far away and from every di­rec­tion. He said then it was al­so in­tend­ed to re­mind cit­i­zens of "its no­ble mes­sage and we feel a deep sense of na­tion­al pride." Hunt was ques­tioned about the flag dur­ing yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann's. He said it was "130 feet high and takes a con­sid­er­able amount of en­gi­neer­ing to plant a struc­ture that high and of that weight."

He added: "There is a lot of work that had to be done on the foun­da­tion lev­el. I am not ex­act­ly sure if that fig­ure ($2 mil­lion) is ex­act­ly cor­rect but if it that is the cost it is what the flag does for the cit­i­zen­ry of Trinidad and To­ba­go as we pass there. There is no price on na­tion­al pride." Hunt said his min­istry and the Gov­ern­ment were "very proud to erect such a flag as a sym­bol of our coun­try for all to see." Asked if a flag, cost­ing tax­pay­ers $10 mil­lion to elic­it na­tion­al pride, al­so would not be a prob­lem, Hunt said: "You are tak­ing the ques­tion to an­oth­er realm." The Min­is­ter then at­tempt­ed to clar­i­fy his po­si­tion. "What I said is if it costs that amount ($2 mil­lion), the Gov­ern­ment of T&T is hap­py and proud to cre­ate a sym­bol of na­tion­al pride, which our flag should im­bue in all cit­i­zens."

On an­oth­er is­sue, Hunt said Gov­ern­ment gave all the sup­port re­quest­ed by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Crick­et Board to the T&T crick­et team which lost the fi­nals in the Twen­ty/20 Cham­pi­ons League in In­dia re­cent­ly. He said the Gov­ern­ment had been a "strong and un­wa­ver­ing sup­port­er of all our na­tion­al teams, in­clud­ing the na­tion­al crick­et team." He said this year, $550,000 was spent on the T&T na­tion­al crick­et team to take part in the com­pe­ti­tion. He said that was sup­ple­ment­ed by a con­tri­bu­tion of $100,000. There have been wide­spread crit­i­cism of the Gov­ern­ment for not do­ing enough for the team as it was spon­sored by an In­di­an com­pa­ny, Venky.