Nicholas Clarke

The Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs pre­sent­ed 13 na­tion­al sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions with a com­bined to­tal of $6.3m dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um's VIP Lounge in Mu­cu­rapo yes­ter­day.

The vouch­ers were the first part of the Min­istry's 2010 Grant Fund­ing Pol­i­cy in which an es­ti­mat­ed $68m will be dis­pensed through­out the year. The re­cip­i­ents were the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ics Ad­min­is­tra­tion ($1,451,754), T&T Crick­et Board ($1,124,557.49), T&T Cy­cling Fed­er­a­tion ($843,775.50), T&T Hock­ey Board ($759,074.68), T&T Ten­nis As­so­ci­a­tion ($532,052.87), T&T Vol­ley­ball Fed­er­a­tion ($459,497.39), Am­a­teur Swim­ming As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T ($256,369.60), T&T Golf As­so­ci­a­tion ($216,963.58), All Sport Pro­mo­tion ($212,500), T&T Pro­fes­sion­al Foot­ball League ($200,000) and an ex­tra $50,000 for four of its clubs, Na­tion­al Bas­ket­ball Fed­er­a­tion of T&T ($134,790.48), T&T Net­ball As­so­ci­a­tion ($25,300) and Am­a­teur Box­ing As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T ($19,666.67).

The NAAA, which claimed the First Cit­i­zens Foun­da­tion Sports­man (Ren­ny Quow), Sports­woman (Josanne Lu­cas) and Youth (Je­hue Gor­don) of the Year Awards last week and the TTCB, win­ner of the Jef­frey Stollmey­er Memo­r­i­al Award for Ad­min­is­tra­tion, were the two biggest ben­e­fi­cia­ries. In or­der to qual­i­fy for fund­ing, the or­gan­i­sa­tions were re­quired to sub­mit its strate­gic, de­vel­op­men­tal and op­er­a­tional plans as well as its au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments for ex­am­i­na­tion. Min­is­ter of Sport and Youth Af­fairs Gary Hunt said that the as­so­ci­a­tions would re­ceive their ad­di­tion­al pay­ments on the con­di­tion that they lived up to the Min­istry's ex­pec­ta­tions. "I want to re­it­er­ate, you play a very im­por­tant role in na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment and we know that you recog­nise the im­pact that this as­sis­tance will have on the lives of our coun­try's ath­letes," he said. "The fur­ther grants to come will de­pend on you meet­ing your mile­stones... At the end of the day, the cit­i­zens want to see val­ue for their mon­ey from their sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions."

Hunt went on to com­mend the as­so­ci­a­tions for mak­ing steps to­ward pro­fes­sion­al­is­ing their sys­tems and for pay­ing close at­ten­tion to ef­fi­cien­cy. Field­ing ques­tions about the Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um in Toura­ba, the min­is­ter said that Ude­cott had ad­vised the gov­ern­ment that the project was in its fi­nal stages of con­struc­tion yet the Min­istry was "re­ex­am­in­ing" its plans to build a pro­posed $30m pavil­ion af­ter con­sid­er­ing the dis­tur­bance it may cause the sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ty.