The FI­FA-ap­point­ed Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee (NC) has as­sured its com­mit­ment to ful­fill­ing the man­date giv­en to it by the sport’s world gov­ern­ing body- FI­FA, in March last year, and has sought the ser­vices of Ac­count­ing firm Ernest &Young to achieve its goal.

The man­date in­cludes the liq­ui­da­tion of a ris­ing debt that has for many years, crip­pled T&T’s foot­ball. The man­date al­so re­quires the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee to po­si­tion the T&TFA for fresh elec­tions af­ter two years.

In a re­sponse to the TTFA mem­ber­ship that comes al­most three weeks af­ter con­cerns were raised about bla­tant mis­man­age­ment in the sport, Robert Hadad, the chair­man of the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee is­sued a four-page re­sponse that high­light­ed the state of af­fairs of the sport present­ly and the chal­lenges they faced in at­tempt­ing to achieve their man­date.

On May 1, Hadad was called out for gross mis­man­age­ment, rang­ing from his non-pay­ment of salaries to staff mem­bers, play­ers and coach­es of the se­nior na­tion­al men's team which is sched­uled to play World Cup qual­i­fy­ing match­es against the Ba­hamas and St Kitts/Nevis in June, to no au­dit­ed and com­pli­ance com­mit­tee, no an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ings (AGM), no au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments for the year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2020; in­creas­ing debt and poor fi­nan­cial man­age­ment, and the mis­man­age­ment of the World Cup match against Guyana that was played in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic.

Hhow­ev­er, Hadad said yes­ter­day: “The au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments for years end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2017, and 2018 re­port­ed that the TTFA’s cur­rent li­a­bil­i­ties far ex­ceed­ed its cur­rent as­sets, cast­ing doubt on the TTFA’s abil­i­ty to con­tin­ue as a go­ing con­cern. In the most re­cent au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments for the year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2019, dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 26, 2021, the au­di­tors were not able to pro­vide an opin­ion since they could not be as­sured of the TTFA’s abil­i­ty to sat­is­fy all its debts and to con­tin­ue as a go­ing con­cern.

Giv­en the TTFA’s poor fi­nan­cial con­di­tion, the NC en­gaged an in­de­pen­dent pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices firm, Ernst & Young Ser­vices Lim­it­ed (EY), to ver­i­fy the TTFA’s cred­i­tors. EY’s re­port, dat­ed April 9, 2021, re­vealed to­tal es­ti­mat­ed out­stand­ing li­a­bil­i­ties and unassert­ed claims (con­tin­gent li­a­bil­i­ties) of ap­prox­i­mate­ly TT$98.5 mil­lion as of Feb­ru­ary 9, 2021. EY al­so re­port­ed ma­jor pol­i­cy, pro­ce­dur­al and con­trol de­fi­cien­cies with­in the TTFA’s Pur­chase to Pay process. EYs work will as­sist with the for­mu­la­tion of a debt re­pay­ment plan as well as in­form the re­me­di­a­tion re­quire­ments nec­es­sary to en­hance the TTFA’s over­all gov­er­nance and con­trol en­vi­ron­ment.”

Hadad as­sured that since fi­nan­cial gov­er­nance is a cor­ner­stone and an in­di­ca­tion of the strength of an or­ga­ni­za­tion, pur­suant to the au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments, the NC’s re­view of the or­ga­ni­za­tion and EY’s find­ings, it ap­pears that the As­so­ci­a­tion suf­fered from weak fi­nan­cial gov­er­nance and, as a re­sult, has been mis­man­aged for sev­er­al years.

“The fi­nan­cial state­ments, which were rat­i­fied at Gen­er­al Meet­ings over the last decade, sug­gest that the As­so­ci­a­tion has con­sis­tent­ly failed to man­age its ex­pens­es with­in ap­proved bud­gets. The re­sult: mount­ing debt and the TTFA fac­ing the very re­al risk of in­sol­ven­cy and liq­ui­da­tion.

There­fore, it is crit­i­cal that, the TTFA’s fi­nan­cial af­fairs be man­aged in a sus­tain­able man­ner. We can­not re­peat what hap­pened at the start of 2020, when the TTFA ap­point­ed dozens of coach­ing and tech­ni­cal staff for its var­i­ous Na­tion­al Teams and oth­er ad­min­is­tra­tive staff, com­mit­ting to pay net salaries amount­ing to just un­der US$1.0 mil­lion; about 100% of the TTFA’s an­nu­al FI­FA For­ward al­lo­ca­tion, the TTFA’s on­ly con­firmed source of fund­ing. There­fore, funds for oth­er ex­pens­es, in­clud­ing air­fare and ac­com­mo­da­tion for tour­na­ments, util­i­ties and in­sur­ance, to name a few, were not ad­e­quate­ly bud­get­ed,” the re­port said.

Ac­cord­ing to the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee, the coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic has fur­ther ex­ac­er­bat­ed sit­u­a­tions, as it dis­pelled claims it mis­man­aged the coun­try’s World Cup qual­i­fy­ing match­es to be played at home, which in­clud­ing Guyana match on March 25.

“Af­ter FI­FA lift­ed the TTFA’s sus­pen­sion on 19th No­vem­ber 2020, and CON­CA­CAF con­firmed the new sched­ule of the 2021 World Cup Qual­i­fiers on 4th De­cem­ber 2020, the NC held the first of many meet­ings, with the Sports Com­pa­ny of T&T on 21st De­cem­ber 2020 to de­vel­op plans for host­ing the Guyana Qual­i­fi­er in Trinidad and To­ba­go. How­ev­er, based on the Min­istry of Health’s (MOH) re­sponse on 19th Feb­ru­ary 2021, to the TTFA’s pro­pos­al, the match had to be played in an­oth­er ter­ri­to­ry.

Since then, in prepa­ra­tion for the June 2021 Qual­i­fiers, the Min­istry of Health has been en­gaged in nu­mer­ous dis­cus­sions to eval­u­ate the op­tion of host­ing those games on home soil. How­ev­er, giv­en the re­cent surge in COVID-19 cas­es, that op­tion is not fea­si­ble.”

In the mean­time, the com­mit­tee as­sured that the coun­try par­tic­i­pat­ed at FI­FA and CON­CA­CAF tour­na­ments, while the se­nior women’s team will be­gin train­ing soon.

The com­mit­tee is al­so in the process of form­ing a Uni­fied League, as League foot­ball in T&T has been go­ing through a tran­si­tionary pe­ri­od with dis­cus­sions cen­tred around the de­vel­op­ment of a na­tion­al league struc­ture. As such the NC has con­tact­ed the FI­FA League De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme for ad­vice and tech­ni­cal guid­ance as it de­signs the uni­fied league struc­ture from grass­roots to elite play­ers. The ex­er­cise is be­ing led by a Steer­ing Com­mit­tee which com­pris­es rep­re­sen­ta­tives from key stake­hold­ers of league foot­ball in T&T.