WAL­TER AL­IBEY

wal­ter.al­ibey@guardian.co.tt

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith has post­poned the Com­mis­sion­er’s Cup due to the re­fusal by the Min­istry of Health to al­low medics, coach­es, se­cu­ri­ty or sub­sti­tutes to par­tic­i­pate in the event due to COVID-19 re­stric­tions.

Grif­fith an­nounced the de­ci­sion in a re­lease yes­ter­day, adding it came af­ter Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh in­sist­ed that on­ly 25 peo­ple at a time would be al­lowed to par­tic­i­pate in the youth foot­ball event.

Both Deyals­ingh and Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram had said be­fore that child-re­lat­ed sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties were not ad­vised due to the pan­dem­ic. How­ev­er, Deyal­is­ngh per­mit­ted adult-re­lat­ed sports, in­clud­ing foot­ball, once the par­tic­i­pants ad­here to the lim­it of 25 peo­ple. Af­ter cas­es of lo­cal spread start­ed last week, Paras­ram again re­it­er­at­ed his po­si­tion and urged par­ents to take care of their chil­dren, while Deyals­ingh sug­gest­ed they play sports at home.

On­ly re­cent­ly, sev­er­al youth tour­na­ments, in­clud­ing the Youth Pro League, Na­tion­al Bas­ket­ball Fed­er­a­tion of (NBFTT) Un­der-17 teams’ prepa­ra­tion for an in­ter­na­tion­al event and var­i­ous acad­e­mies were put on hold be­cause of the CMO’s ad­vice.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Grif­fith told Guardian Me­dia that both Deyals­ingh and the CMO have been mak­ing com­ments in to­tal con­trast to the poli­cies of the Gov­ern­ment.

“We would take ad­vice from the med­ical ex­perts, that be­ing the CMO, but the hypocrisy by the Min­is­ter of Health. When you send a let­ter stat­ing that you can go ahead with a foot­ball tour­na­ment but on­ly have 25 per­sons, it means that Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh nev­er had boy­hood days, he maybe nev­er played a sport in his life, to have the au­dac­i­ty to say that a foot­ball tour­na­ment with 25 peo­ple alone, he is say­ing that you can have 11-a-side alone with a ref­er­ee and two lines­men, no coach­es, no sub­sti­tutes, no train­ers, no med­ical staff and it shows ig­no­rance of the high­est or­der.”

He added, “How can you think about hav­ing a sport­ing tour­na­ment with­out these dif­fer­ent, crit­i­cal, lo­gis­tic and sup­port mech­a­nisms, es­pe­cial­ly for young per­sons. I am wait­ing to see what is go­ing to hap­pen for the CPL be­cause based on Mr Deyals­ingh’s com­ment now, it means that when the CPL comes around, I am on­ly go­ing to al­low 11 play­ers on ei­ther side, the two um­pires and some­body to do the scor­ing.”

At­tempts to reach Deyals­ingh were un­suc­cess­ful yes­ter­day, as calls to his mo­bile phone went unan­swered.

Grif­fith, who start­ed the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice-or­gan­ised Com­mis­sion­er’s Cup last year, said while he had to post­pone his event, Deyals­ingh had ad­vised po­lit­i­cal par­ties on how to com­ply with the law while main­tain­ing more than 25 per­sons in gen­er­al space. He said in keep­ing with the TTPS’ de­sire to re­spect Gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy, he wrote to Deyals­ingh seek­ing guid­ance and clar­i­fi­ca­tion as it re­lates to host­ing the tour­na­ment but got a re­sponse lim­it­ing the event to 25 peo­ple at a time.

“The TTPS pre­ferred to con­duct our tour­na­ment in a man­ner that would not in any way con­tra­vene ei­ther the pol­i­cy de­sire of the Gov­ern­ment or the ac­tu­al law. The an­swer pro­vid­ed by the Min­istry of Health makes it clear to me that the strict­ly le­gal in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the law is to be ap­plied dur­ing the Com­mis­sion­er’s Cup,” Grif­fith said.

“It’s clear for the sake of this tour­na­ment that play­ers, ref­er­ees, sup­port staff and coach­es all count to­wards 25. How­ev­er, in an elec­tion walk­a­bout, small­er groups are not, ac­cord­ing to the Min­is­ter, vi­o­lat­ing the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance act even if all these groups are in one gen­er­al space. (In­ter­est­ing­ly many of these same walk­a­bouts have scores of chil­dren par­tic­i­pat­ing). It is this pre­cise in­con­sis­ten­cy that I, as Com­mis­sion­er, have been try­ing to get clar­i­fied by some­one…any­one, in the Min­istry of Health for weeks. In­stead, I’m met with - ‘we ad­vise, we rec­om­mend or we pre­fer, etc.”

He added, “Vary­ing in­ter­pre­ta­tions of the law by po­lice of­fi­cers lead to some peo­ple be­ing ‘shut down’ while oth­ers are be­ing al­lowed to con­tin­ue. At this time, I have no firm pa­ra­me­ters to guide the ac­tions of the TTPS.”

Grif­fith said he had been try­ing for weeks to get clar­i­fi­ca­tion on the is­sue with Deyals­ingh and Paras­ram but was de­nied for weeks be­fore yes­ter­day’s cor­re­spon­dence. As a re­sult of the post­pone­ment, he said some 1000-plus youths would lose the op­por­tu­ni­ty to par­tic­i­pate in a low-risk struc­tured tour­na­ment.