Bri­an Lewis

Mon­ey wor­ries! No Mon­ey! These days the Min­istry of Sport and the Sport Com­pa­ny (SportTT) are com­ing in for ad­verse com­ment and crit­i­cism ei­ther open­ly or by in­nu­en­do. Sports ad­min­is­tra­tors are pub­licly point­ing to the Min­istry and or SportTT. The blame for every dis­ap­point­ment is dumped square­ly in the lap of the hon­chos at Aber­crom­by Street and Hen­ry Street. This col­umn, on the oth­er hand, has a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive and that is fin­gers should be point­ed at lo­cal sports ad­min­is­tra­tors for miss­ing the strate­gic boat. The nar­ra­tive sur­round­ing sport is fo­cused on the neg­a­tive be­cause of sports ad­min­is­tra­tors and oth­er in­ter­est­ed in­di­vid­u­als for whom the on­ly pri­or­i­ty is ob­tain­ing mon­ey. With labour unions hav­ing to ac­cept five per­cent, how could Na­tion­al Sport Or­gan­i­sa­tions (NSOs) and their stake­hold­ers not suf­fer fund­ing cuts? NSOs should have been alive to the de­vel­op­ments tak­ing place, mon­ey wor­ries should not have come like the prover­bial thief in the night.

A few years ago as mon­ey flowed like wa­ter the T&TOC lead­er­ship on many oc­ca­sions cau­tioned NSOs that they should be pru­dent and act with fis­cal dis­ci­pline, com­mon sense and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. Words of rea­son were dis­missed and scoffed at. Dur­ing the heady times of plen­ty the em­pha­sis shift­ed from vol­un­teerism. No longer was it about sport at the ser­vice of the larg­er and greater good. Strate­gic and na­tion­al sport pol­i­cy co­her­ence be­came a ca­su­al­ty as so­cial and recre­ation­al sports sud­den­ly be­came elite and am­a­teur sport ad­min­is­tra­tors changed overnight in­to high val­ue pro­fes­sion­als. An over­re­liance on gov­ern­ment fund­ing fos­ters de­pen­den­cy. NSOs are the ones to make the hard de­ci­sions not gov­ern­ment. It is un­re­al­is­tic and a dere­lic­tion of du­ty and lead­er­ship to de­mand and even ex­pect that gov­ern­ment and by ex­ten­sion the tax­pay­er to fund the com­plete wish list of any NSO. Not, at any rate, in times when ba­bies are cry­ing from hunger or drown­ing in cesspits.

Gov­ern­ment fund­ing is not an ab­solute or God giv­en right; there are some gov­ern­ment hand out ob­sessed NSOs who be­lieve that they should re­ceive all the fund­ing that they re­quire from the pub­lic purse. Their love and de­vo­tion to their sport is with­out ques­tion. How­ev­er, NSOs can­not af­ford to be naïve or for that mat­ter com­pli­ant and al­low un­rep­re­sen­ta­tive views and ac­tions to be tak­en for the ma­jor­i­ty view. Small but vo­cal mi­nori­ties can do un­told dam­age when the ma­jor­i­ty dis­play in­dif­fer­ence. There is not enough mon­ey to go around and NSOs are en­tire­ly re­liant on gov­ern­ment fund­ing. A recipe for dis­as­ter, if ever there was one. Solv­ing it re­quires fresh ideas and thought lead­er­ship. Sport is vul­ner­a­ble to the ex­ter­nal prob­lems in the po­lit­i­cal, so­cial and so­cio-eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment. In­sti­tu­tion­al and sys­temic bar­ri­ers to sports de­vel­op­ment are sub­stan­tial and par­tic­i­pa­tion in sport is not tak­en se­ri­ous­ly. There are se­ri­ous is­sues to be ad­dressed.

Maybe if NSOs change their poor me nar­ra­tive to one that is more ed­i­fy­ing and con­struc­tive, then sport will be tak­en se­ri­ous­ly and strate­gi­cal­ly pro­mot­ed as a sig­nif­i­cant con­trib­u­tor to so­cial de­vel­op­ment, eco­nom­ic growth and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion. The gen­er­al pub­lic and cor­po­rate T&T are sick and tired of the pos­tur­ing, brinks­man­ship, bac­cha­nal and con­fu­sion. In­stead of run­ning around shout­ing the sky is falling start talk­ing about an in­te­grat­ed strat­e­gy to cre­ate a sport­ing cul­ture that will grow and cre­ate a sus­tain­able sport ecosys­tem and in­fra­struc­ture that will see more Trin­bag­o­ni­ans play­ing, en­joy­ing and ex­celling in sports. Be­fore go­ing cap in hand beg­ging and de­mand­ing more mon­ey pro­vide in­for­ma­tion on par­tic­i­pa­tion lev­els; ideas and plans on how to make sports more ac­ces­si­ble for the av­er­age Trin­bag­on­ian; sug­ges­tions on how to fa­cil­i­tate in­creased par­tic­i­pa­tion among all cit­i­zens in recre­ation­al and com­pet­i­tive sports and how to co­or­di­nate pro­grammes that sup­port ath­lete de­vel­op­ment and progress to high per­for­mance. Es­tab­lish the lo­cal sport brand as trust­wor­thy and cred­i­ble, ex­cel­lence dri­ven and in­no­v­a­tive. Dys­func­tion­al, in­ept and in­com­pe­tent is not a brand any­one would want to align with,spon­sor, fund or in­vest in.

Bri­an Lewis is the Hon­orary Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Olympic Com­mit­tee http// www.ttoc.org. The views ex­pressed are not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of the T&TOC.