Sean Nero

The Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ics Ad­min­is­tra­tion (NAAA) is not a ca­su­al­ty of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion launched in­to the op­er­a­tions and spend­ing pat­terns of state-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC).

Pub­li­cised doc­u­ments claim­ing to show a ques­tion­able jump in the cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions de­part­ment's bud­get from $67 mil­lion to 200 mil­lion over a 24-month pe­ri­od and the sub­se­quent probe in­to the mat­ter by the En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine, had not af­fect­ed the en­er­gy com­pa­ny's in­vest­ment in sport in ac­cor­dance with its cor­po­rate so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty man­date.

At a me­dia con­fer­ence on March 12, held at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Port-of-Spain, Anand Rag­bir, vice-pres­i­dent of fi­nance and in­for­ma­tion man­age­ment an­nounced the com­pa­ny's re­new­al of its con­tract with the NAAA amount­ing to $12 mil­lion over three years.

"Our lo­cal sport­ing in­dus­try re­fus­es to rest on its lau­rels and we at NGC will not, ei­ther. We are hold­ing fur­ther dis­cus­sion with the NAAAs re­gard­ing a longer term part­ner­ship, in an at­tempt to sus­tain the progress it has made the past year and fur­ther strength the or­gan­i­sa­tion," he said.

"As such, we have agreed to con­tribute an an­nu­al sum of $TT4 mil­lion from 2015-2017. This mon­ey will specif­i­cal­ly tar­get the con­tin­u­a­tion of the ini­tia­tives from the 2014 agree­ment. There will al­so new ini­tia­tives, which in­clude: A Kids Ath­let­ics Pro­gramme; De­vel­op­ment Meets; Par­tic­i­pa­tion and pre­sen­ta­tion for in­ter­na­tion­al meets, for ex­am­ple the Penn Re­lays, World Youth Cham­pi­onship and Pan Am Ju­niors and Pan Am Games; as well as ca­pac­i­ty build­ing.

"All of these goals are be­ing sought in the con­text of the up­com­ing Olympic Games in Brazil, where we ex­pect to see the fruits of our labours proud­ly on dis­play on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage. Those of you who ac­tive­ly fol­low sport in T&T will agree that we are steadi­ly work­ing to­ward our lofty, but very at­tain­able goals of a greater pres­ence of T&T ath­letes through­out the spec­trum of ath­letes. We be­lieve this is in no small part thanks to the ef­forts of the mem­ber bod­ies of the NAAAs and your de­ter­mi­na­tion to bring 21 cen­tu­ry think­ing to the world of sport."

Its rein­vest­ment in the NAAA was a di­rect re­sult of the tan­gi­ble re­sults achieved dur­ing a pre­vi­ous con­tract, which caused the en­er­gy com­pa­ny to deep­en their re­la­tion­ship.

Last year, Rag­bir said, NGC signed as a ma­jor spon­sor with a $2.3 mil­lion con­tri­bu­tion to the NAAA.

NGC, said the vice-pres­i­dent of fi­nance, was metic­u­lous in en­sur­ing that funds do­nat­ed through its pro­grammes were al­lo­cat­ed in such a way as to en­sure the best re­turn on in­vest­ment.

"We are sat­is­fied that our spon­sor­ship is aligned to the NAAA's new strate­gic plan (2012-2016). This plan de­scribes their tar­get­ed state and iden­ti­fies four pri­or­i­ties re­quired get there. Of these four, we con­sid­er three a good fit for our sup­port, as they mesh nice­ly with NGC's CSI pol­i­cy. The first of these is im­prov­ing gov­er­nance, which will be demon­strat­ed through con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form, specif­i­cal­ly, ac­count­abil­i­ty in the man­age­ment of ath­let­ic clubs. In this vein, NGC has spon­sored sev­er­al ca­pac­i­ty build­ing work­shops with the ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers of the NAAAs, aimed at equip­ping them with the prac­ti­cal and lead­er­ship skills nec­es­sary for this trans­for­ma­tion. Be­sides the of­fi­cials, ath­letes were al­so ex­posed to work­shops that fo­cused on a va­ri­ety of themes per­ti­nent to their ca­reers," said Rag­bir.

An in­ter­est­ing side ef­fect of the grow­ing na­tion­al in­ter­est in sport, said Rag­bir, was the move to­ward set­ting the in­ter­na­tion­al stage in T&T, in­stead of hav­ing this coun­try go to the world. In his view, the time was ripe to bring the world to lo­cal shores, along with all the pos­i­tive eco­nom­ic rip­ples that such a sports tourism ini­tia­tive could of­fer.

"No one can dis­count the ben­e­fits to be de­rived from sup­port­ing this as­so­ci­a­tion and ath­letes by ex­ten­sion," said Rag­bir.

"It is a rare Trin­bag­on­ian who isn't filled with pride when one of our own achieves glo­ry for our beloved red, white and black in the in­ter­na­tion­al are­na. We love to see our flag flown high be­fore cheer­ing crowds, we love to see our coun­try's name in print, laud­ing our ath­letes; be­cause with this comes na­tion­al re­spect and na­tion­al recog­ni­tion."