Gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) Ramesh Ramd­han is cham­pi­oning the cause for staff mem­bers to be paid salaries for March.

Mem­bers of staff did not get paid last month be­cause of a court or­der that al­lowed for­mer tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor Kendall Walkes the op­por­tu­ni­ty to liq­ui­date the ac­counts of the em­bat­tled foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion for monies owed to him for wrong­ful dis­missal back in 2016.

Walkes who was re­cruit­ed un­der the Ray­mond Tim Kee-led TTFA for $93,000 a month, won a judge­ment for $5.2 mil­lion by the lo­cal court last De­cem­ber. Walkes' ac­tion al­so led to the TTFA ac­counts be­ing gar­nishee on Feb­ru­ary 13.

How­ev­er, on Thurs­day, Ramd­han who was asked to stay on to help the re­cent­ly FI­FA-ap­point­ed nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee of busi­ness­men Robert Hadad (chair­man), re­tired banker Nigel Ro­mano and At­tor­ney Judy Daniel (deputy chair­man) as well as two oth­ers who will be ap­point­ed soon, said he has been in con­stant com­mu­ni­ca­tion with Hadad, a di­rec­tor of the HAD­CO Group of Com­pa­nies, for salaries to be paid to the work­ers, among oth­er things which will kick-off the work of the com­mit­tee with its man­date of gov­ern­ing the sport lo­cal­ly.

Ramd­han, head of the sec­re­tari­at at the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion, said af­ter wages were paid for De­cem­ber and Jan­u­ary, he had to bor­row mon­ey to pay work­ers for Feb­ru­ary, be­cause monies ex­pect­ed from the world gov­ern­ing body for foot­ball, FI­FA, did not come in time.

“And I was pre­pared to bor­row mon­ey again to en­sure that work­ers can pay their bills and live like every­one else, but the of­fices were shut down on March 15 due to the out­break of the coro­n­avirus. But not be­cause the of­fice is closed means work­ers don’t de­serve to be paid,” Ramd­han said.

Mean­while, Hadad told Guardian Me­dia Sports on Fri­day that his first as­sign­ment will be to pay salaries for March when monies be­come avail­able by FI­FA. He stayed clear of the bat­tles tak­ing place in­side and out­side the Foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion, say­ing his com­mit­tee has tak­en a job to bring back the con­fi­dence and trust by cor­po­rate T&T, gov­ern­ment etc in­to T&T foot­ball.

“I need to hear from all stake­hold­ers to chart a way for­ward. I am not in­to point­ing fin­gers and play­ing the blame game, I just want to get the job done,” said Hadad, a di­rec­tor of the HAD­CO Group of Com­pa­nies, who added that he be­lieves with the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic tak­ing place, the pay­ment of salaries could take a few months as he is un­sure of whether work will be­gin for him and his com­mit­tee mem­bers.

The bill for month­ly wages at TTFA is $100,000 which ex­cludes the salary for the gen­er­al sec­re­tary, who in ad­di­tion to his will­ing­ness to go out and search for the same amount to pay staff, will al­so have to find mon­ey to re­pay the lender.

The hard-work­ing gen­er­al sec­re­tary has been mak­ing sac­ri­fices of his own, hav­ing not re­ceived a sin­gle cent in wages since as­sum­ing the role of gen­er­al sec­re­tary on De­cem­ber 16.

“I re­alised that there was hard­ly any mon­ey in the TTFA’s ac­count so I chose to have the monies owed to me, used to pay staff,” Ramd­han told Guardian Me­dia Sports when con­tact­ed.

Mean­while, there has been a slow trick­le of funds com­ing in­to the TTFA’s ‘go fund me’ ini­tia­tive from the gen­er­al pub­lic to the for­mer TTFA ex­ec­u­tive of William Wal­lace (for­mer pres­i­dent), and he al­so oust­ed vice pres­i­dents Clynt Tay­lor, Su­san Joseph-War­rick and Sam Phillip, to chal­lenge FI­FA for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee, through the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sports (CAS) in Lau­sanne, Switzer­land.

Less than a week since the launch of the ini­tia­tive, there is an amount of $1,905 to date.

Wal­lace said the out­break of COVID-19 has been a ma­jor set­back as in­di­vid­u­als are try­ing to hold on to every pen­ny they have be­cause of the un­pre­dictable na­ture of the virus. He not­ed that be­cause of the coro­n­avirus, peo­ple have al­so lost their jobs and are un­able to do­nate.