Min­is­ter of Sports and Youth Af­fairs Phillip Watts on Wednesday (Oc­to­ber 8) hand­ed the mem­bers of the new Board of the Sports Com­pa­ny of T&T their in­stru­ments of ap­point­ment.

The sim­ple cer­e­mo­ny at the Min­istry of Sports of­fice in Nicholas Tow­ers, Port-of-Spain fea­tured the 12 mem­bers, min­is­ter Watts, and oth­er min­istry staff. The 12 mem­bers were led by chair­man Kester Lendor, who will have Shaun Teekas­ingh as his deputy.

Lendor is the man­ag­er of the sport­ing clubs at Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny of Trinidad (Petrotrin), and Teekas­ingh is an At­tor­ney-at-Law with 13 years of ex­pe­ri­ence in Civ­il Lit­i­ga­tion, In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions, Con­tract Law, Per­son­al In­jury, and Crim­i­nal Law.

They have been joined by di­rec­tors- Daryan Warn­er, the son of for­mer CON­CA­CAF Pres­i­dent and FI­FA Vice Jack Warn­er, who has been charged with fraud and rack­e­teer­ing, mon­ey laun­der­ing, and bribery by the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment, and Adri­an Ali, the Coun­cil­lor for Munroe Road/Ca­roni Sa­van­nah Road Dis­trict, as di­rec­tors.

The oth­er mem­bers are Lester Lal – Di­rec­tor, Hay­den Duke – Di­rec­tor, Ne­fer­tari Ker­na­han – Di­rec­tor, Sharon Win­ches­ter – Di­rec­tor, Kavi­ta Karam­s­ingh- Di­rec­tor, Ndu-Bisi Hall – Di­rec­tor, Dar­ren Ali – Di­rec­tor, and Deryck Mathu­ra – Di­rec­tor.

Watts, in a re­lease, said, “The new board is poised to lead SporTT with re­newed fo­cus and com­mit­ment to ad­vanc­ing sport de­vel­op­ment across Trinidad and To­ba­go, en­sur­ing en­hanced gov­er­nance, ac­count­abil­i­ty, and op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy in pro­mot­ing na­tion­al sport­ing ex­cel­lence.”

He al­so ex­pressed con­fi­dence that the col­lec­tive ex­per­tise and ded­i­ca­tion of the new­ly ap­point­ed board mem­bers will sig­nif­i­cant­ly con­tribute to SporTT’s strate­gic vi­sion and fos­ter trans­for­ma­tion­al growth in the coun­try’s sport­ing sec­tor.

Con­tact­ed for a com­ment soon af­ter, Lendor said, “This is very ear­ly days yet. I was ap­point­ed on­ly a few hours ago, so I need to meet with the rest of the board and the op­er­a­tions peo­ple at the Sports Com­pa­ny to just have a look at the chal­lenges and the con­straints, and what is go­ing well. Then, I can for­mu­late what the plans are, but right now, it is too ear­ly in the game for me to speak on any­thing def­i­nite­ly,” Lendor ex­plained.

Ac­cord­ing to Lendor, “Sports need to be dri­ven in gen­er­al in Trinidad. The com­po­si­tion of the Board is good, a lot of qual­i­ty in­di­vid­u­als, and I look for­ward to work­ing with them. I think every­body has their strengths and every­body is bring­ing some­thing unique to the or­gan­i­sa­tion, but it is still ear­ly days. I don’t have all the in­for­ma­tion on all the peo­ple on the board, but I do know a few of them.”

“I ac­tu­al­ly have a work­ing re­la­tion­ship with one per­son on the board, but again, it is ear­ly days. So, it’s for us to sit with the CEO and the board mem­bers and fig­ure out where board mem­bers are com­fort­able work­ing and see how best we can nav­i­gate our way through the work­ings of the or­gan­i­sa­tion,” Lendor ex­plained.

Mean­while, Kirt Sin­nette, a for­mer na­tion­al and Olympic box­er, was sup­posed to have made up a 13-mem­ber board. How­ev­er, Sin­nette, a known mem­ber of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (CoP), which was among the par­ties that threw their sup­port be­hind the rul­ing Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, was not called, al­though he ac­cept­ed the po­si­tion months ago when asked.

Sin­nette de­clined to com­ment yes­ter­day.

Board of Di­rec­tors:

Mr. Kester Lendor – Chair­man

Mr. Shaun Teekas­ingh – Deputy Chair­man

Mr. Lester Lal – Di­rec­tor

Mr. Hay­den Duke – Di­rec­tor

Ms. Ne­fer­tari Ker­na­han – Di­rec­tor

Ms. Sharon Win­ches­ter – Di­rec­tor

Ms. Kavi­ta Karam­s­ingh- Di­rec­tor

Mr. Adri­an Ali – Di­rec­tor

Mr. Ndu-Bisi Hall – Di­rec­tor

Mr. Dar­ren Ali – Di­rec­tor

Mr. Deryck Mathu­ra – Di­rec­tor

Mr. Daryan Warn­er – Di­rec­tor