The po­lice were called out yes­ter­day to the Min­istry of Sport fol­low­ing a bomb scare which sent em­ploy­ees scam­per­ing to safe­ty.Con­fir­ma­tion of the bomb threat on the min­istry's Aber­crom­by Street Port-of-Spain, main of­fice came from act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams.He said: "The Min­istry of Sport had a bomb scare from the per­son­nel at the min­istry. I was in fact con­tact­ed. I made arrange­ments for bomb tech­ni­cians to vis­it the min­istry. "We al­so got in con­tact with Fire Ser­vices and the Guard and Emer­gency Branch who vis­it­ed the lo­ca­tion."

Up­on check­ing, Williams said, the scare turned out to be a hoax."It was a bomb scare with­out mer­it. We have dealt with that mat­ter," he added.Williams said he was no­ti­fied by the min­istry's act­ing per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Ian Rad­man about the scare.T&T Guardian pho­tog­ra­ph­er Michael Bruce and re­porter Shal­iza Has­sanali were at the min­istry speak­ing to Life Sport pro­gramme di­rec­tor Cor­nelius Price when the min­istry re­ceived the threat around 11.30 am and had to evac­u­ate the build­ing.

While the build­ing was be­ing evac­u­at­ed there was al­so talk that three Life Sport pro­gramme mem­bers had stormed the build­ing de­mand­ing pay­ments for their ser­vices. Min­istry of­fi­cials said that too was a hoax.A source at the min­istry said yes­ter­day's in­ci­dent took place while the min­istry was in­sti­tut­ing a new se­cu­ri­ty plan for its build­ing and em­ploy­ees.Dur­ing the in­ter­view, Price re­ceived a call on his cell­phone and left the con­fer­ence room in a hur­ry. He re­turned sec­onds lat­er say­ing: "Guys we have to va­cate the build­ing im­me­di­ate­ly... the build­ing is un­der threat."On reach­ing the ground floor, Price, af­ter speak­ing to se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers, said he heard "it was a bomb threat."Af­ter em­ploy­ees and mem­bers of the pub­lic left the build­ing, the min­istry's main door was locked and the side gate lead­ing to the car park was chained. Price said lat­er that be­cause of the neg­a­tive pub­lic­i­ty Life Sport had been re­ceiv­ing in the last few weeks, peo­ple were "get­ting car­ried away with the at­mos­phere." He said he was hap­py that every­one in the build­ing came out safe.