Anand Ram­per­sad

Min­is­ter Dar­ryl Smith's ear­ly in­ten­tion to en­gage in a con­sul­ta­tive par­tic­i­pa­to­ry ap­proach to over­see the de­vel­op­ment of sport is a promis­ing start to his man­date.

By stress­ing the im­por­tance of the voic­es of ath­letes and com­mu­ni­ties through which sport is man­i­fest­ed, he is ac­cen­tu­at­ing their sig­nif­i­cant role in ef­fec­tive pol­i­cy for­mu­la­tion and ex­e­cu­tion.

Fur­ther­more, the con­sul­ta­tive par­tic­i­pa­to­ry ap­proach can be ex­tend­ed to oth­er key play­ers such as sport­ing bod­ies, ed­u­ca­tion au­thor­i­ties, women, and per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties. The gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion can al­so be part of the con­sul­ta­tive par­tic­i­pa­to­ry process by hav­ing ac­cess to de­tailed re­ports of sport­ing pro­grammes that were im­ple­ment­ed in the past and those that are too im­ple­ment­ed. This will al­low the pub­lic to as­sess how their monies have and are be­ing utilised.

Min­is­ter Smith's com­ments are in keep­ing with the PNM's man­i­festo com­po­nent on sport (http://pnm.org.tt/im­ages/pdf/PNM_Man­i­festo_2015.pdf p62-64). The theme stress­es the im­por­tance of pro­mot­ing the coun­try's ath­letes in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, build­ing a sport­ing in­dus­try while at the same time en­cour­ag­ing a healthy na­tion. To achieve these ob­jec­tives some of the points high­light­ed were:

Da­ta col­lec­tion once again be­comes an im­por­tant fea­ture of the sport plan­ning cy­cle to en­sure that the en­tire process is ef­fi­cient and ef­fec­tive. Ef­fi­cient mon­i­tor­ing and eval­u­a­tive prac­tices have to be­come nor­ma­tive in the over­all process. This is al­so im­por­tant to tax­pay­ers and pri­vate en­ter­pris­es whose monies are used for fund­ing. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the avail­abil­i­ty of da­ta and pro­gramme re­ports for pub­lic in­for­ma­tion should be eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble.

Fund­ing is a crit­i­cal as­pect of de­vel­op­ing every as­pect of sport. The State needs to de­vel­op strate­gic re­la­tion­ship with the pri­vate sec­tor es­pe­cial­ly for­eign com­pa­nies to make a de­ci­sive con­tri­bu­tion to sport. Fur­ther­more, the State needs to con­sid­er us­ing the NL­CB to fund a greater per­cent­age of sport as hap­pens in Eng­land. This rec­om­men­da­tion was made in the Re­port of the Steer­ing Com­mit­tee for the Es­tab­lish­ment of a Na­tion­al Sport­ing Au­thor­i­ty 1988.

The con­sul­ta­tive ap­proach, if it be­comes the modus operan­di of the Min­is­ter and his steer­ing com­mit­tee, should en­sure that any ap­proach to deal­ing with so­cial prob­lems such delin­quen­cy through sport does not re­peat the gross cost­ly cat­a­stro­phes of the Life­S­port Pro­gramme. An as­sess­ment of the suc­cess­es and fail­ures of the Hoop of Life ap­proach should be con­duct­ed and made pub­lic. The cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tors as well as the pub­lic need to be in­formed if de­sired re­sults of the $36M ex­pen­di­ture was jus­ti­fied or whether a more ef­fi­cient ap­proach could have been im­ple­ment­ed.

The con­tin­ued suc­cess of ath­letes is clear­ly de­pen­dent up­on a trans­par­ent strate­gic roadmap even more so in the con­text of eco­nom­ic dif­fi­cul­ties.

Min­is­ter Smith has to guard against the "gimme gimme" cul­tur­al trait that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Row­ley has un­equiv­o­cal­ly, and right­ly so, called to end, as it can eas­i­ly seep in­to sport. Strong lead­er­ship, ef­fec­tive plan­ning and de­ci­sion mak­ing and open com­mu­ni­ca­tion will go a long way to­ward re­al­is­ing the sport­ing goals and ob­jec­tives of Min­is­ter Smith's man­date.

High­lights

?�2 In­crease the pool of tal­ent from which world cham­pi­ons can emerge for in­ter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion,

�2 Pro­mote sports as a way to curb crime and so­cial skills,

�2 Use sports to fos­ter greater com­mu­ni­ca­tion and un­der­stand­ing amongst dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties, races, creeds in T&T,

�2 In­crease par­tic­i­pa­tion op­por­tu­ni­ties for un­der­rep­re­sent­ed groups in par­tic­u­lar dis­abled per­sons, women, girls and the vul­ner­a­ble youth and im­prove phys­i­cal fa­cil­i­ties to cater for this tar­get­ed group of per­sons,

�2 Im­prove the avail­abil­i­ty of in­for­ma­tion of sports in­volve­ment by con­duct­ing a Na­tion­al Sport and Recre­ation­al Cen­sus,

�2 Ac­tive­ly de­vel­op and pro­mote Sport Tourism,

�2 Pro­vide in­cen­tives for the growth and de­vel­op­ment of pro­fes­sions al­lied to Sport, such as Sports Med­i­cine, Phys­i­cal Ther­a­py, and Sports Me­dia,

�2 De­vel­op a Do­mes­tic Sport Re­search Data­base by per­form­ing a bi-an­nu­al sur­vey which will es­tab­lish bench­mark, im­prove­ments to the lo­cal sport in­dus­try and pro­vide a com­pre­hen­sive da­ta for sports and recre­ation,

�2 Cre­ate a Sports In­sti­tute of Trinidad and To­ba­go that will cap­ture and hone the skills of young ath­letes while grow­ing and mod­ernising the Sports In­dus­try.

The over­all de­vel­op­ment of sport should be as­sessed on at least four (4) ob­jec­tive and in­ter­locked plat­forms:

�2 Re­search through con­sul­ta­tion with all ma­jor stake­hold­ers in­clud­ing ath­letes, com­mu­ni­ties, sport ad­min­is­tra­tors (present and past), the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, and the uni­ver­si­ties. Re­search of­fers the ben­e­fit of pro­vid­ing in­for­ma­tion about dif­fer­ent as­pects of sport such as: i) Is­sues fac­ing ath­letes- fi­nan­cial re­sources, med­ical, coach­ing etc. ii) Ad­min­is­tra­tive chal­lenges-fund­ing, or­gan­i­sa­tion hu­man ca­pac­i­ty etc. iii) Com­mu­ni­ty chal­lenges- par­tic­i­pa­tion rates and de­mo­graph­ic char­ac­ter­is­tics, fa­cil­i­ties, coach­ing, co­or­di­na­tion of ac­tiv­i­ties etc.

In oth­er words re­search helps to min­imise spec­u­la­tion and 'guessti­mat­ing' which sad­ly has been the norm up­on which ex­pen­sive sport­ing de­ci­sions have been made.

�2 The re­search da­ta should be­come the ma­jor in­gre­di­ent for the for­mu­la­tion rel­e­vant poli­cies to guide the de­vel­op­ment of sport and sport de­vel­op­ment process­es. Ques­tions about the rel­e­van­cy of the cur­rent Na­tion­al Sport Pol­i­cy (2002) (http://sta­t­ic.sport.gov.tt/im­ages/pdf/pro­grammes/na­tion­al_sport_pol­i­cy.pdf) need to be asked.

�2 Im­ple­men­ta­tion, mon­i­tor­ing and eval­u­a­tion should form the ba­sis of eval­u­at­ing the da­ta dri­ven sport poli­cies. The im­ple­men­ta­tion role of the SporTT Com­pa­ny needs to be as­sessed to de­cide whether it will con­tin­ue as is or if re­vamp­ing is re­quired for greater ef­fi­cien­cy.