Mark Bas­sant

The mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar Home for Foot­ball that has been cho­sen as a step-down fa­cil­i­ty for re­cov­er­ing COVID-19 pa­tients will un­der­go some ma­jor changes be­fore the fa­cil­i­ty is launched to as­sist the Gov­ern­ment in its fight against the virus.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley con­firmed the 72-bed fa­cil­i­ty will be used dur­ing yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net press con­fer­ence, fol­low­ing an ex­clu­sive Guardian Me­dia re­port yes­ter­day which broke the news.

But an in­sid­er with knowl­edge about the fa­cil­i­ty yes­ter­day re­vealed that the Wa­ter and Sewage Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) had been work­ing at the fa­cil­i­ty over the last week to en­sure some is­sues are dealt with.

“They are fi­nal­ly en­sur­ing that the Home of Foot­ball will have its own wa­ter sup­ply. Be­fore, they had to re­ly on the wa­ter sup­ply from the neigh­bour­ing cy­cling velo­drome,” the source ex­plained.

The in­sid­er added that they were al­so mov­ing to out­fit ar­eas for a prop­er kitchen and laun­dry fa­cil­i­ty on the premis­es.

“They def­i­nite­ly have to in­stall equip­ment and run the prop­er plumb­ing to get those spaces up and run­ning,” the source said.

For­mer T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) pres­i­dent William Wal­lace had al­so raised is­sues about Fire Ser­vice ap­provals and li­a­bil­i­ty in­sur­ance for the 72-room ho­tel, which cost $16.85 mil­lion to con­struct, when he shut down the fa­cil­i­ty soon af­ter its gala open­ing last No­vem­ber.

“I un­der­stand that fire ex­tin­guish­ers are to be placed in every room as well as the re­cep­tion area and ser­vice area,” the in­sid­er said in re­la­tion to this as­pect.

Oth­er sources told Guardian Me­dia that the li­a­bil­i­ty in­sur­ance was re­newed in Feb­ru­ary of this year and with peo­ple ex­pect­ed to oc­cu­py the premis­es if need­ed, the mat­ter is no longer an is­sue.

“We know that the Gov­ern­ment has got­ten all the nec­es­sary ap­provals and we are hap­py that they have de­cid­ed to use the fa­cil­i­ty,” the in­sid­er said.

Mean­while, con­cerns were raised yes­ter­day over why Wal­lace, whose ex­ec­u­tive was dis­band­ed on March 17 and re­placed by a FI­FA Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee three months af­ter they took over stew­ard­ship of the TTFA, wrote a let­ter to Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young say­ing they sup­port­ed the move to use the fa­cil­i­ty and not­ing that the mat­ter should have gone through him.

Wal­lace claimed that the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee, led by Robert Hadad, had no au­thor­i­ty to give per­mis­sion for such a move nor did it have any le­gal stand­ing in the coun­try.

Wal­lace said in the let­ter, “As you are aware, the TTFA was formed by an act of Par­lia­ment (act 17 of 1982) and is to be gov­erned by its con­sti­tu­tion. The con­sti­tu­tion of the TTFA places the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for ne­go­ti­at­ing and en­ter­ing in­to any con­tracts or agree­ments on the pres­i­dent of the TTFA, a post I have held since 24th No­vem­ber 2019.”

The Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee has been tasked by FI­FA with de­vel­op­ing a plan to re­vive the TTFA and take it for­ward. Con­tact­ed on the is­sue yes­ter­day, Hadad said he had no com­ment but not­ed FI­FA would ad­dress the mat­ter soon.