Anand Ram­per­sad

As the po­lit­i­cal cam­paigns of 2015 warm up, sport has been re­ceiv­ing more at­ten­tion than in the past. The next three columns will as­sess the gov­ern­ment's 2010 sport­ing man­i­festo as well as de­lib­er­ate over what should form part of the sport­ing man­i­festos of all the po­lit­i­cal par­ties con­test­ing the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tions.

To date, much of the talk has been about recre­ation­al grounds out­fit­ted with lights and the much-an­tic­i­pat­ed com­ple­tion of the aquat­ic cen­tre, cy­cling velo­drome and na­tion­al ten­nis cen­tre.

How­ev­er, sport is more than the de­vel­op­ment of sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties and this was clear­ly ar­tic­u­lat­ed in the gov­ern­ment's 2010 man­i­festo. Sport de­vel­op­ment was con­nect­ed to 'De­vel­op­ing a fit and healthy na­tion,' and 'Sport as an In­dus­try � Mak­ing Sport Self-Suf­fi­cient." http://www.trinidadand­to­bagonews.com/ar­ti­cles/UNC-man­i­festo-2010.pdf.

Sport de­vel­op­ment was placed in­to three (3) cat­e­gories: de­vel­op our peo­ple through sport; sport as an in­dus­try; sport fa­cil­i­ties

Un­der the cat­e­go­ry 'de­vel­op our peo­ple through sport' sev­er­al sub-points were high­light­ed:

Sport is in­te­gral to the pro­mo­tion of healthy lifestyles of our peo­ple

Sport will be an in­te­gral part of cur­ricu­lum from Ear­ly Child­hood to Sec­ondary

Im­ple­ment Poli­cies to de­vel­op both recre­ation­al and com­pet­i­tive di­men­sions of Sports for all lev­els of in­di­vid­ual abil­i­ty

Cre­ate an en­vi­ron­ment in which cit­i­zens of all ages are en­cour­aged to par­tic­i­pate in sport, whether recre­ation­al or com­pet­i­tive

De­vel­op­ing link­ages with ex­ter­nal bod­ies

Man­date im­ple­ment­ing agen­cies of the Min­istry of Sport to seek and de­vel­op link­ages with ex­ter­nal bod­ies, in­clud­ing aca­d­e­m­ic in­sti­tu­tions, sports acad­e­mies and sports clubs and teams to pro­vide greater op­por­tu­ni­ties for our up­com­ing ath­letes to hone their skills

The Min­istry of Trade will work with the sport­ing as­so­ci­a­tions to en­cour­age sports­men and sports­women to take ad­van­tage of var­i­ous trade agree­ments which af­ford them greater ac­cess to for­eign mar­kets

For the ben­e­fit of read­ers, the afore­men­tioned points will be dis­sect­ed to pro­vide a ba­sis up­on which a score­card of achieve­ments can be as­sessed.

In 2014, the Min­is­ter of Health pub­licly an­nounced that obe­si­ty among chil­dren was on the rise. This com­ment was re­in­forced by a study high­light­ed in the Dai­ly Tele­graph of Eng­land where Trinidad and To­ba­go was ranked the 'third fat­test' coun­try in the world. The re­cent re­port (2015) of CARPHA have in­di­cat­ed that Caribbean is fac­ing an obe­si­ty epi­dem­ic among young peo­ple.

The ques­tion that has to be asked is what pro­grammes have been im­ple­ment­ed over the past five years to ad­dress the is­sue of pro­mot­ing a healthy cit­i­zen­ry. In ad­di­tion to the pro­grammes, the score­card re­port sheet should in­di­cate both ge­o­graph­i­cal and de­mo­graph­ic in­for­ma­tion such as age group, gen­der, re­li­gion etc. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the re­port sheet should in­di­cate the mon­i­tor­ing and eval­u­a­tion re­ports of what­ev­er pro­grammes that were im­ple­ment­ed. In oth­er words, a prop­er as­sess­ment can be made of what was sit­u­a­tion in 2010 and what has hap­pened five years lat­er.

In terms of schools, what mea­sures were im­ple­ment­ed to mea­sure the per­for­mance of sport and phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ties from ear­ly child­hood to sec­ondary school? How many stu­dents in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem are phys­i­cal­ly ac­tive? How many are not phys­i­cal­ly ac­tive? What da­ta is avail­able to as­sess the per­for­mance of stu­dents? Are there vari­a­tions base on ge­og­ra­phy, gen­der, so­cial class, re­li­gion, eth­nic­i­ty, ill­ness, dis­abil­i­ties etc?

The in­vest­mentin recre­ation grounds

There is no deny­ing that there has been more recre­ation­al grounds up­grad­ed with pavil­ions and light­ing, how­ev­er, are these fa­cil­i­ties be­ing op­ti­mised by the res­i­dents in the com­mu­ni­ties in which they are sit­u­at­ed? What have been the poli­cies and im­ple­men­ta­tion strate­gies to en­cour­age res­i­dents in com­mu­ni­ties to utilise the up­grad­ed fa­cil­i­ties? What da­ta has been used to de­vel­op these poli­cies and who have been the im­ple­ment­ing bod­ies and agen­cies? Is it pos­si­ble to quan­ti­fy the num­ber of per­sons across age, gen­der, re­li­gion, class who par­tic­i­pate in sport and phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ties at least three times a week for a min­i­mum of 30 min­utes? Such da­ta is eas­i­ly avail­able in coun­tries such as Eng­land, Cana­da, Aus­tralia, USA and New Zealand, to name a few.

What have been some of the part­ner­ship agree­ments be­tween the Min­istry of Sport and lo­cal and for­eign aca­d­e­m­ic in­sti­tu­tions? In what way is the Min­istry of Sport part­ner­ing with UTT and UWI to pro­vide op­por­tu­ni­ties to hone ath­letes' sport­ing and aca­d­e­m­ic skills. How many ath­letes have ben­e­fit­ted op­ti­mal­ly from these pro­grammes?

What are some of con­nec­tions with sports clubs lo­cal­ly, re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly? Have these li­aisons been ben­e­fi­cial? Can they be de­vel­oped fur­ther to con­nect to the de­vel­op­ment of sport tourism and oth­er ar­eas of sport?

What have been some of the ben­e­fits pro­vid­ed through the Min­istry of Trade in terms of af­ford­ing sports­men and sports­women op­por­tu­ni­ties from trade agree­ments and ac­cess to for­eign mar­kets?

The an­swers to these ques­tions should pro­vide the pop­u­la­tion with in­for­ma­tion to the de­gree of ac­com­plish­ment un­der the cat­e­go­ry "De­vel­op our peo­ple through sport." Such ques­tions and ex­pect­ed an­swers will en­sure that politi­cians are kept ground­ed in the sport­ing is­sues of the day and are not al­lowed to dis­tract the pop­u­la­tion with un­want­ed bac­cha­nal and ole-talk.