As the bat­tle for T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) ac­counts be­tween for­mer pres­i­dent William Wal­lace and Robert Hadad, the chair­man of FI­FA's Nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee rages on, the staff mem­bers at the TTFA has writ­ten to its for­mer pres­i­dent William Wal­lace in their plight to be paid.

While Wal­lace's lawyer Matthew Gayle awaits a third re­sponse from First Cit­i­zens Bank (FCB) to al­low his client ac­cess to the TTFA ac­counts, the 15 work­ers at the or­gan­i­sa­tion send an un­signed let­ter to the for­mer pres­i­dent.

Ac­cord­ing to a source close to the lat­est de­vel­op­ment who spoke to Guardian Me­dia Sports on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty said, "The work­ers did not want to sign the let­ter for fear of vic­tim­iza­tion. The source said the work­ers are very frus­trat­ed be­cause they are caught in the mid­dle of this feud and they be­lieve that's it's un­fair to them."

In the let­ter as seen by Guardian Me­dia Sports, the TTFA staff wrote, "With the ut­most of re­spect, the staff of the Gen­er­al Sec­re­tari­at of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion has found it nec­es­sary at this time write to you to share our opin­ion on the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion. We would like to start by high­light­ing that there now ex­ists an ur­gent and stress­ful sit­u­a­tion that has been thrust up­on the staff due to the non­pay­ment of salaries for a sec­ond con­sec­u­tive month."

It con­tin­ued, "Please note that this is not an at­tempt for us to make any sort of po­lit­i­cal state­ment or take sides in the on­go­ing dis­pute be­tween your­self and the Nor­mal­iza­tion Com­mit­tee how­ev­er the sit­u­a­tion as it is now, af­fects us great­ly and di­rect­ly and we have nev­er been grant­ed the priv­i­lege of be­ing so­licit­ed for an opin­ion. We would high­light that there are two sep­a­rate di­men­sions to this sce­nario that one must take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion. They are the hu­man side and the pro­fes­sion­al side."

When con­tact­ed about the let­ter Ramesh Ramd­han, the gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the TTFA on Sun­day he told Guardian Me­dia Sports that he re­ceived the let­ter but don't en­ter­tain anony­mous let­ters, while Wal­lace said he didn't re­ceive it.

The work­ers out­lined sev­en points of con­cern to them:

*that to­day May 2nd is the be­gin­ning of a 3rd month that the ad­min­is­tra­tive staff has not re­ceived salaries.

*This al­so af­fects tech­ni­cal staff mem­bers some that have not been paid as much as 6 months

*TTFA full-time staff are cur­rent­ly em­ployed and do not qual­i­fy for any of the gov­ern­ment as­sis­tance pro­grams and there­fore while oth­er mem­bers of the gen­er­al pub­lic do have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to ac­cess as­sis­tance we do not.

*Mem­bers of staff have al­so been re­fused as­sis­tance through NIS be­cause of non­pay­ment of statu­to­ry de­duc­tions

*If con­trol of the TTFA ac­counts is tak­en be­fore the courts to be set­tled, staff mem­bers will have to en­dure ex­treme hard­ship be­cause of the ex­tend­ed time we will have to go with­out a means to be paid.

*Mem­bers of staff have al­ready be­gun to get calls from cred­i­tors

*There are mem­bers of staff who are the sole bread­win­ner in their house­hold

The work­ers who have been home since March 15 when the TTFA closed its of­fice be­cause of the coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic which has af­fect­ed T&T and the glob­al com­mu­ni­ty added that "While our gen­er­al knowl­edge of the over­all sit­u­a­tion is most­ly re­strict­ed to what is pub­lished in the me­dia, It is our opin­ion that the ad­min­is­tra­tion and tech­ni­cal de­part­ments of the TTFA are made up of tech­ni­cal of­fi­cers who are com­pe­tent pro­fes­sion­al in their var­i­ous fields, who should be al­lowed to do their jobs in the in­ter­est of foot­ball. That be­ing said we would like to high­light the cur­rent pro­fes­sion­al /ad­min­is­tra­tive co­nun­drum that the staff is fac­ing."

The bat­tle, which has thus far been fought via a se­ries of strong­ly-word­ed le­gal let­ters sent be­tween at­tor­neys for both par­ties, re­sumed on Thurs­day with gale giv­ing FCB un­til Fri­day to re­spond.

In Feb­ru­ary, the of­fice staff was not paid by the TTFA which was still led by Wal­lace and the gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ramesh Ramd­han told Guardian Me­dia Sports that he bor­rowed mon­ey to pay staff. How­ev­er, since FI­FA re­moved Wal­lace and his three vice pres­i­dents — Clynt Tay­lor, Joseph Sam Phillips and Su­san Joseph-War­rick on March 17, the staff has not been paid for March and April.

Last month FI­FA an­nounced that it was hand­ing over grants to its mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly those in need of help dur­ing the cur­rent COVID-19 pan­dem­ic en­vi­ron­ment. It al­so an­nounced that a FI­FA Re­lief Fund will al­so be ac­ces­si­ble to vul­ner­a­ble mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tions.

This means the em­bat­tled foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion is in line to re­ceive US$1.2 mil­lion (an es­ti­mat­ed TT$6.7mil­lion), plus a CON­CA­CAF US$160,000 (an es­ti­mat­ed TT$1,040,000) grant, as well as an un­known amount for the re­lief fund to the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee.

How­ev­er, it was fol­low­ing this an­nounce­ment by FI­FA that a bat­tle com­menced for the TTFA ac­counts on April 17.

The four of­fi­cers have since ap­pealed FI­FA's de­ci­sion to re­move them for of­fice to the Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sports (CAS) in Lau­sanne, Switzer­land.