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Monday, February 24, 2025

Hunt: $2m flag a misstep

by

20100207

?Sport and Youth Af­fairs Min­is­ter Gary Hunt says the erec­tion of a $2 mil­lion flag last year at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um off Wright­son Road in Port of Spain was a mis­step. Hunt ad­mit­ted this in an ad­dress to the na­tion last night. There have been a pub­lic out­cry against the cost of the project. "Al­though the Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs con­tin­ues to make great strides and have en­joyed con­sid­er­able suc­cess, we have not al­ways got it right," he said. "There have been a few mis­steps along the way and one of these has been the con­struc­tion of a na­tion­al flag at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um. The pro­pos­al to erect a na­tion­al sym­bol at a fa­cil­i­ty that bears the name of our on­ly Olympic gold medal­ist was a no­ble one, but there were er­rors in its im­ple­men­ta­tion." The flag, erect­ed last year, was in­tend­ed to en­cour­age na­tion­al pride, Hunt said, dur­ing a post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence when ques­tioned about the project last year.

Last night he said: "We have heard the pub­lic's con­cerns and have act­ed ap­pro­pri­ate­ly." He said he had since di­rect­ed the Sports Com­pa­ny "to ad­just its sys­tems and poli­cies to en­sure that noth­ing like this oc­curs in the fu­ture. "A na­tion­al flag should nev­er be­come the source of con­flict and con­tro­ver­sy, and I wish to as­sure the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty that it will nev­er hap­pen again," he said. Hunt said the Gov­ern­ment's poli­cies had pro­duced pos­i­tive re­sults for sports and youth de­vel­op­ment in T&T. He said, how­ev­er, that there re­mained the need for more work to be done and the Gov­ern­ment was aware of its re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in that re­gard. "We shall not shirk this re­spon­si­bil­i­ty," he said.

Hunt added that the Gov­ern­ment was com­mit­ted to work with com­mu­ni­ties, youth groups, schools and na­tion­al sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions to achieve more in sports and youth de­vel­op­ment. He said the Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to en­gage the youth pop­u­la­tion with in­no­v­a­tive pro­grammes, such as the Youth de­vel­op­ment and Ap­pren­tice­ship Cen­tres, which tar­gets the vul­ner­a­ble "at risk" youth to fos­ter self-dis­ci­pline and self-es­teem. "As we look to the fu­ture, it is clear that we are on the verge of a gold­en era of sport in T&T. The many suc­cess­es we have en­joyed in the last two years are just the tip of the ice­berg and the best is yet to come," Hunt said.


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