Dis­grun­tled um­pires took their con­cerns to the T&T Crick­et Board and were giv­en the as­sur­ance that ef­forts will be made to ad­e­quate­ly ad­dress their con­cerns. This as­sur­ance came from Stephen Mar­tel, sec­re­tary of the North Zon­al Coun­cil of the T&TCB which host­ed the first of a se­ries of planned sym­po­siums on the fu­ture of the lo­cal game, on Sat­ur­day. Open­ing the bat­ting for the um­pires at the Tran­quil­i­ty Sec­ondary School in Port-of-Spain, was Prem­c­hand Roop­ia who com­plained about the lack of toi­let fa­cil­i­ties at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah where North Zone match­es are played. Roop­ia said that the ab­sence of wash­rooms pos­es a health haz­ard for of­fi­cials and play­ers alike and is par­tic­u­lar­ly em­bar­rass­ing for fe­males who are con­tin­u­ing to play a lead­ing role in the lo­cal game. He said match of­fi­cials are ex­pect­ed to per­form their du­ties un­der very dif­fi­cult con­di­tions and more of­ten than not can­not get a drink of cold wa­ter on match-days. He al­so raised the is­sue of a salaries for um­pires which he de­scribed as in­ad­e­quate and ap­pealed to the T&TCB to in­sti­tute a stan­dard stipend across the board. He said this should be paid out in a time­ly fash­ion.

How­ev­er Az­im Bas­sarath, pres­i­dent of the T&TCB re­spond­ed to Roop­ia's con­cerns, say­ing the Um­pires Coun­cil was sole­ly re­spon­si­ble for um­pires re­ceiv­ing late stipends. He said when the T&TCB re­ceives the claims, it takes the or­gan­i­sa­tion about two weeks to con­duct in­quiries to jus­ti­fy the pay­ments and there was no hin­drance to the dis­burse­ment of funds as long as all the cri­te­ria are sat­is­fied. Mar­tel, sec­re­tary of the North Zone, said he was well aware of the dif­fi­cul­ties faced by crick­eters and match of­fi­cials who use the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah and gave a short his­to­ry as to how the sor­ry sit­u­a­tion now ex­ists. Mar­tel in­di­cat­ed there were three wash­rooms at one time on the Sa­van­nah built with the as­sis­tance of the Self Help Com­mis­sion un­der Kr­ish­na Ramku­mar and that a base­ball club al­so so­licit­ed as­sis­tance to con­struct a fa­cil­i­ty near the ceme­tery but the wash­rooms were de­mol­ished by the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion. He said talks are on­go­ing with May­or Louis Lee Sing to have some kind of arrange­ment put in place. The is­sue of park­ing for play­ers, match of­fi­cials and spec­ta­tors was al­so be­ing tack­led and every ef­fort is be­ing made to have the con­cerns ad­dressed.