Ali­cia Llanos

It's of­fi­cial. The 60 feet by 36 feet na­tion­al flag flut­ter­ing at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um cost $2 mil­lion.

In re­sponse to re­cent crit­i­cism from the me­dia and the pub­lic on the ac­tu­al cost of the flag, Min­is­ter of Sport Gary Hunt and chair­man of Sport Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Sportt) Ken­neth Charles have con­firmed that to­tal price of the flag is $2 mil­lion and the job was con­tract­ed to Fire­one Fire­works. Hunt and Charles held a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day at the of­fices of Sportt, Hen­ry Street, Port-of-Spain. Hunt con­firmed Fire­one Fire­works was con­tract­ed to erect the flag and flag­pole. He said three com­pa­nies bid for the project, one of which was the in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­ny Phab­ha Sports. Hunt said Fire­one Fire­works won the con­tract, based on ex­pe­ri­ence, price, rep­u­ta­tion and its re­la­tion­ship with US Flag & Flag­pole Sup­ply. Hunt said 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. Charles broke down the to­tal cost of the flag and flag­pole.

He re­vealed that the foun­da­tion and in­stal­la­tion works cost $940,000. He ex­plained that a 20-foot by 20-foot by 15-foot foun­da­tion was need­ed to sup­port the 150-foot flag.

He said 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. He said the pole is 165 feet high over­all and weighs 15,650 pounds. He said the pole was en­gi­neered to meet all in­ter­na­tion­al spec­i­fi­ca­tions and was made of A-36 car­bon steel to with­stand the 130 miles an hour winds when it is raised. He al­so con­firmed that three ad­di­tion­al flags were bought for $54,336, to­talling a cost of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $2 mil­lion. De­spite the back­lash, Hunt said the flag was cre­at­ed to serve as a con­stant re­minder of the na­tion's sport­ing he­roes and was meant to in­spire pa­tri­o­tism and na­tion­al pride among the pop­u­la­tion. He al­so said $2 mil­lion spent on it was a wor­thy and life-long in­vest­ment. Hunt said the flag was a part of a col­lab­o­ra­tion with Sportt to re­fur­bish and up­date the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in time for the Caribbean Games and all oth­er fu­ture events.

He said the project was part of the Gov­ern­ment's strate­gic na­tion­al plan, Vi­sion 2020. He said the min­istry had not pub­licly re­leased the cost break­down ear­li­er, as it was en­sur­ing that all cal­cu­la­tions and facts were cor­rect. Hunt ex­plained that the cost of the flag it­self was re­vealed on Tues­day to dis­as­so­ci­ate that cost from the to­tal cost of the project. He said the project fell in­to the min­istry's bud­get for the last fis­cal year.

Hunt said the min­istry had ac­tu­al­ly worked un­der its al­lo­cat­ed bud­get from the pre­vi­ous fis­cal year. When asked about the two ex­tra flags that were bought, he re­spond­ed by say­ing that the min­istry had fu­ture plans to add more lega­cy flags to oth­er sta­di­ums across the coun­try to pro­mote na­tion­al pride that wouldl last for gen­er­a­tions. He said de­spite pub­lic con­tro­ver­sy, in time the pub­lic would come to ap­pre­ci­ate the ef­forts made to in­spire the na­tion.