Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

New­ly elect­ed vice pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Red Cross So­ci­ety (TTRCS), Ed­ward Mood­ie, says the or­gan­i­sa­tion cur­rent­ly has no mon­ey.

He made the com­ment dur­ing the re­open­ing of the Red Cross South Branch on Ruth Av­enue, San Fer­nan­do, over the week­end. The branch had been closed for at least five years.

“One must un­der­stand at this time we have ab­solute­ly no funds, and we are start­ing from the bot­tom and are go­ing to rise up,” he said.

In an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Mood­ie re­vealed that the or­gan­i­sa­tion is owed over a mil­lion dol­lars and may have to ex­plore le­gal op­tions to col­lect on it.

He added that the new ex­ec­u­tive found a break­down in am­bu­lance op­er­a­tions and al­so iden­ti­fied the need to rene­go­ti­ate sev­er­al con­tracts.

“As it is right now, even the To­ba­go con­tract is not fi­nan­cial­ly fea­si­ble to con­tin­ue,” he said.

“The Red Cross, though, be­ing the hu­man­i­tar­i­an or­gan­i­sa­tion it is, we con­tin­ued to stand out there and help wher­ev­er we could.”

In No­vem­ber last year, the for­mer gov­ern­ment made a de­ci­sion to sus­pend a $730,000 sub­ven­tion due to out­stand­ing au­dits span­ning over a decade.
Less than a month lat­er, a mis­sion re­port con­duct­ed by the In­ter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion of Red Cross and Red Cres­cent high­light­ed sev­er­al is­sues with­in the so­ci­ety, in­clud­ing mis­man­age­ment, poor fi­nan­cial over­sight, and a break­down in com­mu­ni­ca­tion and gov­er­nance.

Dur­ing this year’s Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee stage of the na­tion­al Bud­get, the present Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ued the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion’s sus­pen­sion of the sub­ven­tion.

“We have sent var­i­ous emails, there was a meet­ing held a lit­tle while back, and we have re­quest­ed an­oth­er meet­ing ... we have been li­ais­ing with the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary and the min­is­ter,” Mood­ie said in giv­ing an up­date on the sit­u­a­tion.

He said the new ex­ec­u­tive was ty­ing up loose ends, start­ing with com­plet­ing out­stand­ing au­dits.

“Last month, 2023 was sub­mit­ted, and this month we are ac­tu­al­ly go­ing to sub­mit 2024, which will be the last out­stand­ing fi­nan­cial state­ment,” he said.

He added, “There is go­ing to be in­clu­sion and col­lu­sion with every­thing that is hap­pen­ing in every di­vi­sion, and we are go­ing to be mon­i­tor­ing, eval­u­at­ing, and ac­count­ing for what­ev­er is tak­ing place at the dif­fer­ent branch­es.”

Mood­ie said every­one on the ex­ec­u­tive was cur­rent­ly vol­un­teer­ing as they ex­plored op­tions such as the liq­ui­da­tion of cer­tain as­sets to make pay­roll and an in­crease in fees for first aid and CPR train­ing pro­grammes of­fered to cor­po­rate T&T.

Mood­ie said the Red Cross was work­ing to re­build trust with all mem­bers and vol­un­teers, start­ing with the re­open­ing of the south branch.
Ahead of the Au­gust elec­tions, many mem­bers had raised con­cerns about ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in the op­er­a­tional process and the ac­tions of man­age­ment at the time.

At­tempts to con­tact pres­i­dent Anne-Marie Quam­mie-Al­leyne for a com­ment went unan­swered.