An­dre E Bap­tiste

So we all want fund­ing! Yes, every sin­gle sport­ing as­so­ci­a­tion in T&T is in dire need of help. With cor­po­rate T&T suf­fer­ing, these as­so­ci­a­tions have be­come de­pen­dent on tax­pay­ers mon­ey to fund their re­spec­tive sport. It is known as the de­pen­den­cy syn­drome. Now that they are find­ing it dif­fi­cult to ac­cess fund­ing, many are strug­gling. There are sev­er­al rea­sons for this. Com­pared to 10-15 years ago, there have been in­creas­es gen­er­al­ly for every­thing and at my last check, sev­er­al new as­so­ci­a­tions with a heavy de­mand on the trea­sury have come in­to ex­is­tence. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, with the lim­it­ed al­lo­ca­tion of funds both com­pa­nies and gov­ern­ment are call­ing for more trans­paren­cy be­fore hand­ing over their hard earned cash and the tax­pay­ers mon­ey. Sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions must re­alise they can­not ex­pect easy hand­outs when they turn up days be­fore an in­ter­na­tion­al event. Prop­er bud­get­ing and plan­ning are es­sen­tial, to­geth­er with hon­est com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

When both the NSO's and gov­ern­ment are read­ing from dif­fer­ent pages, there will al­ways be con­flict and both need to de­cide on a prop­er way for­ward. Trust is key. Trust though, must work both ways. While we ques­tion the ex­per­tise and skill lev­els of those in gov­ern­ment, we must ask what are the req­ui­site skills of those in­volved in the na­tion­al sport­ing or­ga­ni­za­tions. Twen­ty years ago, that sort of well-in­ten­tioned in­di­vid­ual was what was re­quired and ex­pect­ed. There was a lot more trust be­tween sports and gov­ern­ments. But all of that changed in a so­ci­ety where ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy have be­come more rel­e­vant than friend­ship and faith. It is not on­ly that we are no longer a less trust­ing peo­ple but al­so be­cause of the nu­mer­ous in­ci­dents of de­ceit and dis­hon­est­ly in in­ter­na­tion­al sports. We need to get more pro­fes­sion­als in­volved. We need men and women who un­der­stand eco­nom­ics and busi­ness man­age­ment and if this can be com­bined with sport­ing knowl­edge, then all the bet­ter.

Some of the best or­ga­ni­za­tions that run sports in this coun­try have all these in­gre­di­ents in abun­dance and there­fore it should not sur­prise us that it is eas­i­er for them to gain fund­ing. Work­ing for free is a con­stant ex­cuse by many strug­gling sport­ing or­ga­ni­za­tions. The rea­son why most per­sons no longer buy that state­ment is be­cause in most of the or­gan­i­sa­tions which ut­ter these words, it is known that their of­fi­cers trav­el the most with their re­spec­tive teams with­out any ra­tio­nale for such ex­pen­di­ture. As to the gov­ern­ment, the one area that needs to be iden­ti­fied is what are the re­spec­tive roles of the Min­istry of Sports and the func­tion of SPORTT. As it stands, there is far too much un­cer­tain­ty. Ini­tial­ly when they were es­tab­lished, the con­cept was the SPORTT would en­sure that fund­ing was eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble in­stead of hav­ing to en­dure the bu­reau­cra­cy of the Min­istry of Sports and the slow pro­ce­dur­al process, that is per­ceived as a stan­dard re­quire­ment of gov­ern­ment of­fices.

Sport­ing per­sons were al­ways faced with de­lays be­cause of the lev­el of in­ter­est and in­ac­tiv­i­ty at the Min­istry and there­fore con­stant cries of late fund­ing, led to many wel­com­ing SPORTT. It was gen­er­al­ly felt that this was not ac­cept­ed by those at the Min­istry who felt their pow­er and pres­tige were be­ing erod­ed, and their im­por­tance di­lut­ed. It was an un­com­fort­able re­la­tion­ship de­spite the plau­dits from both sides. In time, SPORTT was ques­tioned about its al­lo­ca­tion and the ques­tion of the lev­els of ap­proval for cer­tain events. In the past, per­sons from the Min­istry of Sports were ap­point­ed on the board of SPORTT and this was sup­posed to as­sist in the gen­er­al thought process be­hind fund­ing. How­ev­er, this has not worked well be­cause the ma­jor dif­fer­ences and the re­spect be­tween both par­ties were not ad­e­quate­ly ad­dressed. One of the prob­lems was that there were too many per­son­al­i­ties. Every­one wants to be the chief, whether they are from the Min­istry or from SPORTT. They con­stant­ly want to have the fi­nal say and ap­pear to care less about the ath­letes.

At this stage, there seems to be an­oth­er change with more re­spon­si­bil­i­ty be­ing hand­ed back to the Min­istry, right­ful­ly or wrong­ful­ly. We can­not say if that is the will of Min­is­ter Anil Roberts or if he was in­flu­enced. It must be not­ed that the Min­is­ter's cur­rent re­port­ed spe­cial ad­vi­sor is Kar­ryl Kel­lar whose pre­vi­ous sport­ing in­car­na­tion was as an em­ploy­ee of the Min­istry. It is all of these per­cep­tions that lead to many ques­tions and cause the lack of trust. The way for­ward for all must in­volve con­struc­tive dis­cus­sion and fair play. There is too much an­i­mos­i­ty. It is al­most as if there is a feel­ing from all sides that we must do our best to en­sure "you do not suc­ceed," for­get­ting the many sport­ing per­sons whose ca­reers and fu­tures are de­pen­dent on these per­sons. And in this, we are not mere­ly dis­cussing the fact that ath­letes, from foot­ball, ath­let­ics, vol­ley­ball, net­ball and box­ing are still be­ing de­nied a chance to utilise the fa­cil­i­ties at the var­i­ous sta­di­ums de­spite the best in­ten­tions of the Min­is­ter. We need Min­is­ter Roberts to take charge as he promised and not be con­cerned with up­set­ting those whom he be­lieves have in­flu­ence.

Hav­ing known the Min­is­ter for so long, I ex­pect­ed him to de­liv­er but at the same time, I ex­pect­ed him to be stronger. Per­haps, I am ex­pect­ing too much. The role of the Min­istry should be more of a fa­cil­i­ta­tor, rather than just seek­ing to im­ple­ment. The Min­istry needs to guide peo­ple. If the Min­is­ter is not care­ful, he could find that some at the Min­istry be­lieve they con­trol the fu­ture and de­vel­op­ment more than him. I do not feel so. To be in­volved in sports is not a job. It is a love and if you love some­thing, you need to put your heart and soul in­to it. There will al­ways be good days and bad days but the test will be to per­se­vere.

The Min­is­ter needs to be wary about mak­ing promis­es be­cause it is easy for many to be­come dis­il­lu­sioned and lose trust in him, even though mat­ters may be out of his con­trol. The ex­pe­ri­ence of the na­tion­al crick­eters and those in­volved in the Pro League are ex­am­ples where a lot was ex­pect­ed and not de­liv­ered. Mo­tor sport is al­so hav­ing sim­i­lar prob­lems, as too swim­ming with the Good­will meet­ing al­most can­celled but for the in­ter­ven­tion of a few cor­po­rate cit­i­zens. This is not the lega­cy Min­is­ter Roberts would like. He needs to re­view and as­sess cer­tain con­tracts, even if it means in­volv­ing out­side ex­perts. No one per­son knows it all. A prop­er­ly co­or­di­nat­ed aware­ness of the elite fund­ing pro­gramme would be a good place to start. Sports is the way for­ward for so­ci­ety to be at peace and in har­mo­ny. The soon­er every­one un­der­stands this, the bet­ter for all of us.