While Thurs­day's res­ig­na­tion of Anil Roberts as the Min­is­ter of Sports brings an end to the po­lit­i­cal ca­reer of one of the more con­tro­ver­sial min­is­ters of re­cent vin­tage, it al­so rais­es se­ri­ous ques­tions about Cab­i­net's over­sight of pub­lic ex­pen­di­ture and its im­ple­men­ta­tion of pro­grammes aimed at stem­ming the ris­ing tide of crim­i­nal­i­ty in this coun­try.

At the cen­tre of both is­sues is the Life­S­port pro­gramme–the brain­child of Mr Roberts–which was ter­mi­nat­ed by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar last week Fri­day af­ter it be­came clear that the pro­gramme had been cap­tured by crim­i­nals. In giv­ing a short his­to­ry of the pro­gramme, the Prime Min­is­ter told Par­lia­ment on Ju­ly 25 that Cab­i­net agreed to the im­ple­men­ta­tion of Life­S­port by the Min­istry of Sport through the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T in Au­gust 2011.

The pro­gramme start­ed in Au­gust 2012, and was ini­tial­ly meant to reach 60 par­tic­i­pants in 33 cen­tres through­out the coun­try, mean­ing that it catered to close to 2,000 par­tic­i­pants be­tween the ages of 16 to 25 years. Life­S­port was de­signed to use the medi­um of sport–bas­ket­ball, crick­et and foot­ball along with a life-skill com­po­nent–to as­sist in the fight against crime with the par­tic­i­pants re­ceiv­ing a month­ly stipend of $1,500.

In her pre­sen­ta­tion to Par­lia­ment, Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the lat­est au­dit of the pro­gramme–the third in its short life–iden­ti­fied pro­cure­ment breach­es, a de­vi­a­tion from the Cab­i­net's man­date, fraud by sup­pli­ers, theft of equip­ment, breach­es of the Pro­ceeds of Crime Act and poor con­trol and mon­i­tor­ing by the of­fi­cers of the Min­istry of Sport. Apart from those is­sues out­lined by the Prime Min­is­ter, the un­rav­el­ing of the pro­gramme–which tar­get­ed young, most­ly black men per­ceived to be at risk of be­ing en­snared by crim­i­nals–rais­es the is­sue of whether Life­S­port was prop­er­ly con­cep­tu­alised and de­signed in the first place.

From the Prime Min­is­ter's own words, it is clear that Cab­i­net ap­proved the spec­tac­u­lar­ly un­con­trolled dis­burse­ment of tax­pay­ers' funds most­ly to young men of African de­scent to pur­sue re­me­di­al ed­u­ca­tion and sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties. At an­oth­er lev­el, the cre­ation of Life­S­port must have been as a re­sult of Cab­i­net's per­cep­tion that the State-fund­ed sec­ondary school sys­tem, which re­ceives hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars a year, was not the ap­pro­pri­ate mech­a­nism to deal with these young men.

On the one hand, this may mean that Cab­i­net feels the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem–which has ab­sorbed the largest in­di­vid­ual chunk of the na­tion­al bud­get over the last more than five years–is in­ad­e­quate to the task of the re­me­di­a­tion and re-so­cial­i­sa­tion of tens of thou­sands of young peo­ple who go through the sys­tem every year.

On the oth­er hand, the painful ques­tion must be raised as to why did Cab­i­net think it ap­pro­pri­ate to build an an­ti-crime pro­gramme around pop­u­lar sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties, when ba­sic com­mon sense would in­di­cate that the fo­cus of most young peo­ple be­tween the ages of 16 and 25 should be on com­plet­ing their ed­u­ca­tion, learn­ing vo­ca­tion­al skills or oth­er­wise prepar­ing them­selves for the world of work.

In ap­prov­ing Life­S­port, Cab­i­net de­lib­er­ate­ly de­signed and then con­signed near­ly 2,000 young, men to spend­ing two years fo­cussing on what for most of them would on­ly be a leisure­ly pas­time, rather than a form of in­come. It would have been more ap­pro­pri­ate–and would have re­quired greater thought and plan­ning–if the pro­gramme had passed on to the young men mar­ketable skills, along with val­ues such as hard work, dis­ci­pline, am­bi­tion and per­se­ver­ance.