Gail Alexan­der

The cur­rent Fi­nance Min­istry probe of the Life Sport pro­gramme will con­firm whether or not there is any crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty in the pro­gramme, says Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith.He took that po­si­tion yes­ter­day, say­ing he had no in­ten­tions of en­ter­ing in­to any "cat­fight" with Life Sport per­son­nel.He re­spond­ed fol­low­ing yes­ter­day's press con­fer­ence by Life Sport of­fi­cials who, while wel­com­ing the Prime Min­is­ter's man­dat­ed au­dit of the pro­gramme, took is­sue with some of Grif­fith's re­cent re­port­ed state­ments on the is­sue and de­fend­ed the pro­gramme.

At last Sat­ur­day's Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship (PP) ral­ly, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, ac­knowl­edg­ing con­cerns about the pro­gramme, said it was be­ing trans­ferred from the Sport­Min­istry to Grif­fith's Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry and a Fi­nance Min­istry au­dit would be done.Yes­ter­day, Life Sport pro­gramme di­rec­tor Cor­nelius Price re­ferred to a re­port quot­ing Grif­fith as say­ing there were "ghost" par­tic­i­pants in the pro­gramme.Re­spond­ing last night, Grif­fith said: "I'm not get­ting in­to any cat­fight over this. I have much more im­por­tant things to do."But I wasn't aware this same per­son (Price) is a po­lice of­fi­cer and is in­volved in any in­ves­ti­ga­tions that he can ver­i­fy some­thing be­fore the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is com­plet­ed. We have the Fi­nance Min­istry do­ing the nec­es­sary au­dit and in­ves­ti­ga­tions to take place.

"My job is to en­sure the pro­gramme can work at op­ti­mum lev­el and if there are any ques­tion­able ac­tiv­i­ties or crim­i­nal el­e­ments in­volved, my job is to root it out. I can­not be in­volved in any pet­ty squab­bling with per­sons who might have their own agen­da."He re­it­er­at­ed he could in no way make any con­fir­ma­tion of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty un­til the au­dit was com­plet­ed.Grif­fith said he was now fi­nal­is­ing de­tails of how the De­fence Force would take over the pro­gramme with the Chief of De­fence Staff and min­istry of­fi­cials. He said he al­so in­tend­ed to work close­ly with the Sport Min­istry."Even though this project is an ini­tia­tive to re­duce crime, it still in­volves a heavy con­cept of sport and we need to en­sure all rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers have an in­put to en­sure not on­ly crime re­duc­tion but al­so en­hanced sport in T&T," he added.

Asked if he would in­volve cur­rent Life Sport of­fi­cials, he said: "We have no in­ten­tion of re­mov­ing every­one in­volved in Life Sport. Many can be of val­ue and can con­tin­ue (but) the whole con­cept is to en­sure if there may be any crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty that is to be re­moved and that can on­ly be con­firmed when the au­dit is com­plet­ed."For some­body work­ing there (Life Sport) to say it is not true is to­tal­ly ir­rel­e­vant to me. Peo­ple will want to keep their jobs so I may need a lit­tle more re­li­able in­for­ma­tion than what is com­ing from some­one who is work­ing di­rect­ly on the pro­gramme.

If crim­i­nal gang ac­tiv­i­ty is con­firmed in the probe? Grif­fith added: "...Then let the chips fall where they may."