Busi­ness­man and for­mer banker Nigel Ro­mano, who is a mem­ber of the FI­FA-ap­point­ed Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee, said his com­mit­tee has been work­ing on a pay­ment mech­a­nism to en­sure that the staff and coach­es of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) can be paid.

On Tues­day, Ro­mano, re­spond­ing to a Guardian Me­dia Sport re­port on Tues­day where the coach­es were seek­ing to take their plight to the Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, said the last thing any­one wants is for mon­ey to be sent to the bank and then it can­not be ac­cessed.

The three-mem­ber nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee of chair­man Robert Hadad, his deputy, at­tor­ney Judy Daniel and mem­ber Ro­mano, has found it­self in a bat­tle for the right to use the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion's bank ac­counts at First Cit­i­zens Bank in Port-of-Spain as the right­ful own­er.

The then TTFA ex­ec­u­tive of for­mer pres­i­dent William Wal­lace and vice pres­i­dents Clynt Tay­lor, Joseph Sam Phillip and Su­san Joseph-War­rick were re­placed by the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee on March 27 af­ter the sport's gov­ern­ing body felt the em­bat­tled foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion faced a re­al risk of in­sol­ven­cy and illiq­uid­i­ty on March 17.

Since then the oust­ed TTFA ex­ec­u­tive has been in a bat­tle to re­gain con­trol of foot­ball gov­er­nance in T&T, by tak­ing FI­FA to the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion of Sport (CAS) in Lau­sanne, Switzer­land, and then to the High Court in Port-of-Spain.

How­ev­er, both Wal­lace and Hadad failed to con­vince the bank that ei­ther was the right­ful own­er of the ac­counts. The First Cit­i­zens le­gal team of Kendell Alexan­der from the John­son, Ca­ma­cho and Singh law firm, called on both men to walk with a le­gal doc­u­ment as proof that ei­ther is the own­er of the ac­counts. This took place al­though both men were in pur­suit of le­gal ac­tion to pre­vent the oth­er from claim­ing the ac­counts.

Ro­mano stressed that once a pay­ing mech­a­nism is worked out the staff and coach­es of the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion, maybe, can get paid be­fore the month (June) is up. He did not re­veal how his com­mit­tee was seek­ing to work out the pay­ment mech­a­nism but dis­missed the thought that FI­FA, the Con­fed­er­a­tion of North, Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion Foot­ball (Con­ca­caf) and the Caribbean Foot­ball Union (CFU) could pro­vide di­rect pay­ments to the per­son­al bank ac­counts of staff mem­bers or coach­es.

"Once we or­gan­ise the pay­ment mech­a­nism, then we can pay. We are tak­ing ad­vice on what's the best way be­cause the last thing you will want to do is to have the monies put in­to a bank ac­count and then you can­not get the mon­ey out," Ro­mano said.

"The mon­ey still has to come in­to Trinidad be­fore it can get to their bank ac­count, it can­not go di­rect­ly to their bank ac­counts."

Mean­while, with al­most three months gone and noth­ing con­crete to show for their ex­is­tence, Ro­mano promised his com­mit­tee will re­veal what its plans are to take foot­ball for­ward, say­ing they did not feel com­fort­able shar­ing it at this point.

How­ev­er, he said his com­mit­tee has been hold­ing talks with UK sports­wear sup­pli­er Avec Sports to en­sure the coun­try gets val­ue for mon­ey.

Ro­mano said, "Avec has been talk­ing to us. Once we get all the le­gal and ap­pro­pri­ate ad­vice we will make a de­ci­sion to en­sure that we get the best val­ue for mon­ey."

He promis­es that his com­mit­tee will al­so look at all the oth­er deals se­cured by the Wal­lace-led ad­min­is­tra­tion to have talks with them.

When con­tact­ed, Min­is­ter of Sports and Youth Af­fairs Sham­fa Cud­joe, could not re­spond to con­cerns by the coach­es as she did not see the re­port. And lat­er, George Elias, Com­mu­ni­ca­tion per­son­nel for the Prime Min­is­ter, said it would be bet­ter for the Sports Min­is­ter to treat with the mat­ter.