Rachael Thomp­son-King

"We got val­ue for our mon­ey," said Dar­ren Mil­lien, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor in the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T (Sportt).

He was re­fer­ring to the cost, $2 mil­lion to be ex­act, spent to erect the na­tion­al flag at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo. Mil­lien was at the time ad­dress­ing the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) of Par­lia­ment which is head­ed by deputy speak­er Pen­ne­lope Beck­les, Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Ari­ma, yes­ter­day. The Sport Com­pa­ny which is the im­ple­ment­ing arm of the Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs is be­ing probed about its op­er­a­tions in­to the in­stal­la­tion of the na­tion­al flag and ren­o­va­tions to sta­dia and recre­ation grounds around T&T. "We used a de­sign-build sys­tem to con­tract for the in­stal­la­tion of the flag," said Mil­lien. "Be­cause we had such a tight time­line to get the job done, this sys­tem was used to min­imise fi­nan­cial risk and form a fixed con­tract." Fire One fire­works was re­spon­si­ble for both the de­sign and con­struc­tion of the na­tion­al flag. The flag it­self cost $18,112.15 as ear­li­er re­port­ed, how­ev­er the ma­jor­i­ty of the $2 mil­lion was at­trib­uted to the con­struc­tion, erec­tion, de­sign and sup­ply. Mem­bers of the com­mit­tee still found the cost to be ex­or­bi­tant de­spite be­ing in­formed that the swampy con­di­tions was a ma­jor fac­tor in the cost­ing of the project. Ac­cord­ing to Mil­lien, the foun­da­tion and in­stal­la­tion works cost $940,000. A 20x20-foot by 15-foot foun­da­tion was need­ed to sup­port the 150-foot flag. "We had our own en­gi­neers give us es­ti­mates as to how much it would cost. Their fig­ures were some­what less but we went with the con­trac­tors. And would prob­a­bly made the same de­ci­sion un­der the cir­cum­stances as I said, we had a tight time­line," said Mil­lien.

It was al­so re­port­ed that the foun­da­tion used 400 tonnes of re­in­forced con­crete and 200 tonnes of steel, re­in­force­ments, blue stone and gran­u­lar back­fill. The de­sign and sup­ply of the flag­pole cost $932,400. The pole is 165 feet high over­all and weighs 15,650 pounds. Over the past two years the Sport Com­pa­ny has tak­en on nu­mer­ous projects and has failed in its at­tempts to meet dead­lines and stay with­in bud­get. Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um in Tarou­ba, Bri­an Lara Sport­ing Com­plex in San­ta Cruz, Mara­cas Val­ley Recre­ation ground, Ari­ma Youth Sport Fa­cil­i­ty and Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um are just a hand­ful of projects that Sportt is lag­ging be­hind on. Both fa­cil­i­ties which is named af­ter T&T star bats­man were to be com­plet­ed last month. "These are projects which we in­her­it­ed. Some of the pro­pos­als were im­prop­er­ly done a lot of which we had to reac­cess the cost of the project to de­rive a fixed cost," said Mil­lien. "In the case of the ($33 mil­lion) Bri­an Lara Sport com­plex in San­ta Cruz, we have been hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ties in set­ting up a meet­ing with Bri­an Lara de­signs."

Esme Rawl­ins Charles, new per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Sport, re­it­er­at­ed what was said by her pre­de­ces­sor Mar­garet Far­ray, that the $632,921,000 was for the ba­sic in­fra­struc­ture and util­i­ties be­ing in­stalled on 627 acres for the Tarou­ba Sport­ing Com­plex. Charles said, "We will get the dead­line and the cost from Ude­cott (Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T)." June Melville ques­tioned the ab­sence of the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer (CEO) in the Sport Com­pa­ny and ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Ken­neth Charles. She was told that Charles had re­signed three weeks ago. Car­ol Charles Austin re­signed at the CEO in 2008. Mil­lien al­so re­vealed that 29 mil­lion have been ap­proved by Cab­i­net for re­pairs at the Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um. He added that all the sta­dia will be in­spect­ed for re­pairs work to be car­ried out in a ef­fort to keep the fa­cil­i­ties in good use­able con­di­tions. The JSC in­tends to vis­it the Tarou­ba site to get a first hand view of the work done.

?Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee:

Pen­ne­lope Beck­les (Chair­man), Mustapha Ab­dul-Hamid, Nizam Baksh, Lau­rel Leza­ma, June Melville, Gail Mer­hair, Win­ston Pe­ters, An­tho­ny Roberts.