Un­de­terred by the con­tin­u­ing COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) will use the vir­tu­al op­tion to fi­nal­ly host its an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing (AGM) on Sat­ur­day from 9.30 am.

This fol­lows its spe­cial gen­er­al meet­ing which is sched­uled starts at 9 am to ap­prove the amend­ment for the vir­tu­al AGM due to the on­go­ing pan­dem­ic.

The AGM was due to be held at it tra­di­tion­al venue, Olympic House on Aber­crom­by Street in Port-of-Spain in April, but was post­poned due to the coro­n­avirus, which con­tin­ues to plague the world.

Guardian Me­dia Sports un­der­stands that due to the so­cial dis­tanc­ing re­stric­tions cur­rent­ly in place, the TTOC, led by pres­i­dent Bri­an Lewis, will hold its AGM en­tire­ly on­line to help in the pre­ven­tion of the spread of COVID-19.

"This is not unique cause most and al­most every sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion, glob­al sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion in­clud­ed have had to piv­ot to­wards vir­tu­al AGMs, vir­tu­al meet­ings and have had to make the nec­es­sary con­sti­tu­tion­al ad­just­ments."

One such ad­just­ment will oc­cur at the spe­cial gen­er­al meet­ing to al­low for the vir­tu­al AGM to un­fold to al­low for healthy dis­cus­sions and the shar­ing of in­for­ma­tion and views.

"It's all about dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion and digi­ti­sa­tion, TTOC has ac­cel­er­at­ed its dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion and digi­ti­sa­tion trans­for­ma­tion and the spe­cial gen­er­al meet­ing on Sat­ur­day will be held at 9 am. The on­ly item on that agen­da is an amend­ment to the con­sti­tu­tion to al­low vir­tu­al coun­cil meet­ings and vir­tu­al an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ings and once that is suc­cess­ful­ly moved, the an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing will be held at 9.30 am.

"It's an ad­min­is­tra­tive amend­ment to the Con­sti­tu­tion to fa­cil­i­tate vir­tu­al op­er­a­tions of the TTOC. Once we are suc­cess­ful, one in get­ting the nec­es­sary quo­rum and get­ting that amend­ment ap­proved, once that is suc­cess­ful­ly nav­i­gat­ed, we will then have the AGM as the stan­dard AGM agen­da."

Mean­ing that the pro­ceed­ings will fol­low its cus­tom­ary agen­da with the con­fir­ma­tion of min­utes, the pre­sen­ta­tion of the au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial ac­counts, the an­nu­al re­port, etc.

"The usu­al agen­da items such as the pre­sen­ta­tion of the au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments, the an­nu­al gen­er­al re­port, there is the usu­al item of the hon­o­raria for the hon­orary sec­re­tary gen­er­al there is no re­quest by that, that's tra­di­tion­al, that the sec­re­tary gen­er­al does not re­quest an hon­o­raria," said Lewis.

"Then there will be an amend­ment to strength­en the me­di­a­tion and ar­bi­tra­tion process of the TTOC and most im­por­tant­ly al­so will be the first good gov­er­nance com­mit­ment re­port to be pre­sent­ed to the AGM."

"Of course, be­cause of COVID-19, the AGM, which is usu­al­ly con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly held by the end of April in the year an­nu­al­ly, could not be held at that time so here we look for­ward to a suc­cess­ful, con­struc­tive and pos­i­tive first-ever vir­tu­al AGM and vir­tu­al spe­cial gen­er­al meet­ing.

"It's a new nor­mal! So wel­come to the dawn of a new era in sport gov­er­nance in sport­ing ad­min­is­tra­tions."

Ac­cord­ing to Lewis, it was in 2015 that an amend­ment was made fol­low­ing a good gov­er­nance and process and work­shops fa­cil­i­tat­ed by Doc­tor Leigh Robin­son.

"It was a col­lab­o­ra­tion project be­tween the TTOC and Olympic sol­i­dar­i­ty and com­ing out of that process of con­sul­ta­tion with all the stake­hold­ers in­clud­ing Sport Com­pa­ny, Min­istry of Sport and all the mem­ber af­fil­i­ates of the TTOC. We tabled at the 2015 an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing, an amend­ment to the Con­sti­tu­tion where the mem­ber­ship and af­fil­i­ates unan­i­mous­ly agreed to abide by a good gov­er­nance com­mit­ment and the part of that com­mit­ment in­clud­ed re­port­ing in­clud­ing a com­mit­ment to re­view con­sti­tu­tions every four years so this is the first time that the re­port will be pre­sent­ed.

"It has tak­en at least four years but it's an evo­lu­tion­ary step but we be­lieve and I be­lieve that the is­sues sur­round­ing gov­er­nance in sport and the Olympic move­ment re­quires that TTOC im­ple­ments the whole com­mit­ment that was made by its mem­bers so that is go­ing to be an im­por­tant as­pect of the first vir­tu­al AGM but it all au­gurs well for the fu­ture of the TTOC.

"We will re­al­ly be tak­ing the whole dig­i­tal vir­tu­al process ex­treme­ly se­ri­ous­ly and the in­ten­tion is to tran­si­tion the TTOC to a pa­per­less op­er­a­tion."