The Min­istry of Sports and Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T will not in­ter­fere in the busi­ness of NG­Bs in T&T. A re­lease sent yes­ter­day stat­ed "The Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs, along with the Sports Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (SporTT), hav­ing con­sult­ed with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Olympic Com­mit­tee, ad­vis­es the pub­lic that as Gov­ern­ment en­ti­ties, the Min­istry and SporTT may mon­i­tor, but should not in­ter­vene in dis­putes with­in Na­tion­al Gov­ern­ing Bod­ies (NG­Bs) for sport."

It added NG­Bs are in­de­pen­dent sport­ing en­ti­ties whose au­ton­o­my is sacro­sanct un­der the Olympic Char­ter and gen­er­al prin­ci­ples of sports law.

Dis­pute res­o­lu­tion and dis­ci­pli­nary pro­ceed­ings are the sole purview of the NG­Bs, who must im­ple­ment and en­force their own in­ter­nal ad­min­is­tra­tive process­es.

They warned that in­ter­ven­tion from gov­ern­ment in these process­es may in­cur coun­try sanc­tions and threats of sanc­tions by in­ter­na­tion­al sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions, as demon­strat­ed by pub­lished cas­es in­volv­ing Sri Lan­ka, Mex­i­co, Kuwait and the In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee (IOC).

"The end re­sult of such sanc­tions would mean that ath­letes would be un­able to par­tic­i­pate at in­ter­na­tion­al games and tour­na­ments un­der the flag of their coun­try of birth but rather (in case of the Olympics) have to par­tic­i­pate un­der the Olympic Flag" it stat­ed.

How­ev­er both min­istry of sports and sport com­pa­ny were adamant it will not pro­vide funds to NG­Bs that fail re­solve dis­putes with­in it. "NG­Bs may be held ac­count­able to the Gov­ern­ment should the use of pub­lic funds be in ques­tion. Fur­ther, the Min­istry re­spon­si­ble for sport may con­sid­er with­hold­ing funds from an NGB if it can­not re­solve its in­ter­nal dis­putes pro­fes­sion­al­ly and ma­ture­ly or if ex­ec­u­tive de­ci­sions are not in keep­ing with best sport­ing prac­tice or the tenets of the Na­tion­al Sport Pol­i­cy" it stat­ed.

They gave the as­sur­ance of con­tin­ued sup­port to NG­Bs in the fu­ture, say­ing "The Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs and the Sports Com­pa­ny of T&T will con­tin­ue to sup­port NG­Bs in the con­duct of their af­fairs and in the best in­ter­est of the ath­letes and sup­port staff who rep­re­sent T&T. We hope for a fair and speedy res­o­lu­tion to all dis­putes and for good gov­er­nance in sport to be nor­malised in the af­fairs of all NG­Bs."