Fol­low­ing his stint as act­ing trea­sur­er of the TTCB since Feb­ru­ary 2024, Stephen Ramkissoon has se­cured the po­si­tion on a full-time ba­sis. This was due to for­mer trea­sur­er Kiswah Chaitoo los­ing his ap­peal in De­cem­ber af­ter the board moved a vote of no con­fi­dence in him in Jan­u­ary 2024.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia Sports on Thurs­day, Ramkissoon as­sured his com­pe­tence in the role due to his vast ex­pe­ri­ence and seemed elat­ed on his ap­point­ment. “I ap­pre­ci­ate the op­por­tu­ni­ty to serve. I am al­ways for crick­et.

Ramkisson, who served the TTCB as the Na­tion­al Un­der-17 man­ag­er, re­places Chaitoo af­ter the TTCB’s Supreme Ap­pel­late Com­mit­tee up­held the TTCB “no con­fi­dence” mo­tion ac­cord­ing to a breach of Ar­ti­cle 27 of the TTCB’s con­sti­tu­tion on De­cem­ber 12, 2024.

On Jan­u­ary 4, the TTCB held a na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive meet­ing at the Na­tion­al Crick­et Cen­tre in Bal­main, Cou­va, and unan­i­mous­ly ap­point­ed Ramkissoon to the po­si­tion. The de­ci­sion was con­firmed by both TTCB First Vice-Pres­i­dent Ar­joon Ram­lal and Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Altaf Baksh.

Ramkissoon un­der­stands that his path has many ob­sta­cles, but he feels pre­pared for the task.

“There are cer­tain chal­lenges to face. How­ev­er, my ca­pac­i­ty as act­ing trea­sur­er gave me enough ex­pe­ri­ence. It’s noth­ing new; it’s just a con­firmed ti­tle.”

The TTCB has al­so un­der­scored their ef­forts to strength­en its fi­nan­cial pro­to­cols in the new year, and Ramkissoon is on board with this no­tion.

“It’s a work in progress. A lot of mea­sures have been put in place with­in re­cent months. There is a lot of em­pha­sis placed on the fi­nan­cial de­part­ment to en­sure that we are ef­fi­cient and things run as smooth­ly as pos­si­ble.

The new­ly ap­point­ed trea­sur­er thanked the TTCB for giv­ing him the op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­tin­ue to serve Trinidad and To­ba­go crick­et and ex­pressed his ea­ger­ness to be­gin work.

Back in No­vem­ber 2023, Chaitoo, af­ter dis­cov­er­ing dis­crep­an­cies in the ac­counts of the TTCB, made a re­port to the Fraud Squad of lar­ce­ny by an em­ploy­ee. Nei­ther the TTCB nor its ex­ec­u­tive had pri­or knowl­edge of the re­port. The TTCB stat­ed that Chaitoo did not ini­tial­ly re­port to the TTCB Ex­ec­u­tive be­fore go­ing to the Fraud Squad. This was in con­trast to the TTCB statutes that led to the Board tak­ing is­sues with Chaitoo’s ac­tions.

The TTCB called a vote of no con­fi­dence in Chaitoo dur­ing a spe­cial gen­er­al meet­ing on Feb­ru­ary 28, 2024, and the mo­tion was car­ried 35-12 af­ter the trea­sur­er re­vealed in De­cem­ber 2023 that ap­prox­i­mate­ly $500,000 was al­leged­ly mis­used over five years.

The mo­tion signed and put for­ward by sev­er­al mem­bers of the TTCB ac­cused Chaitoo of hav­ing com­mit­ted four breach­es ac­cord­ing to ar­ti­cles 25 and 27 of the TTCB con­sti­tu­tion.