Min­is­ter of Sports and Youth Af­fairs Sham­fa Cud­joe was re­cent­ly forced to halt an al­leged at­tempt by the T&T Au­to­mo­bile Sports As­so­ci­a­tion (TTASA) ex­ec­u­tive to change its con­sti­tu­tion.

The ac­tion was prompt­ed af­ter Cud­joe re­port­ed­ly re­ceived com­plaints from TTASA mem­bers that cur­rent TTASA pres­i­dent Fy­zo­ol Madan was seek­ing a third term in of­fice but the as­so­ci­a­tion's con­sti­tu­tion cur­rent­ly lim­it­ed of­fice­hold­ers to no more than two terms in that of­fice.

But speak­ing on dur­ing an in­ter­view with An­dre Er­rol Bap­tiste on i95.5fm on Thurs­day, Cud­joe said she was forced to act af­ter she was alert­ed by mem­bers of the mo­tor­sports fra­ter­ni­ty of the at­tempt to vi­o­late the TTASA con­sti­tu­tion.

"We would have re­ceived com­plaints or it had been brought to our at­ten­tion by the mem­bers of TTASA, as to this new pro­posed move by the lead­er­ship of TTASA," Cud­joe said.

"There are some who have been stat­ing that they have been un­com­fort­able so I would have re­quest­ed from the Di­rec­tor of Sport in the Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs, Mr Patrice Charles, to in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter and to pro­vide the nec­es­sary guid­ance to TTASA as it re­lates to serv­ing a third term and chang­ing the con­sti­tu­tion and so on."

"Of course, that’s usu­al­ly done by an AGM (an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing) and the mem­ber­ship will have the pri­ma­ry say as it re­lates to that. So we wrote to TTASA, in­form­ing them as to the detri­men­tal ef­fect of even try­ing to go that way.

"We would have looked at what is prac­tised else­where as it re­lates to the length of the term and whether or not a pres­i­dent could or should re­peat terms and TTASA re­spond­ed by say­ing they are thank­ful for the guid­ance and so on."

She added, "I know the move that was pro­posed yes­ter­day (Wednes­day) to have the term ex­tend­ed was not done and they in­tend to do a spe­cial meet­ing, where the Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs has been asked to be a part of that meet­ing to pro­vide the nec­es­sary guid­ance to TTASA as it re­lates to this mat­ter."

Sev­er­al cell phone calls to Madan went unan­swered as Guardian Me­da Sports at­tempt­ed to ver­i­fy sev­er­al com­plaints from cur­rent and for­mer mem­bers, among them the fact that they were put out of meet­ings while oth­ers were re­moved from their elect­ed and ap­point­ed po­si­tions. There were al­so re­port­ed­ly two res­ig­na­tions from the ex­ec­u­tive.

Cud­joe al­so made it clear that the min­istry was not over­step­ping its bound­aries in the mat­ter.

"First and fore­most, we must ac­knowl­edge that the sport­ing en­ti­ty is in­de­pen­dent and au­tonomous. Let's state that first­ly. How­ev­er, the Min­istry of Sports and Youth Af­fairs pro­vide the nec­es­sary guid­ance, pro­vide fund­ing and as­sis­tance and so on," she said.

Cud­joe al­so ad­dressed con­cerns over the health and safe­ty of a gym­nas­tics club us­ing the Jean Pierre Com­plex in Mu­cu­rapo for train­ing.

"Right up­on hear­ing of the sit­u­a­tion, I would have re­quest­ed that SporTT (The Sports Com­pa­ny of T&T) do an in­ves­ti­ga­tion of the mat­ter and when I spoke with SporTT as re­cent as to­day (Thurs­day), SporTT was in­struct­ed to have that class re­moved from the Jean Pierre Com­plex and to see if there could be a bet­ter place for them to train," the Min­is­ter said.

"We are look­ing at the Wood­brook fa­cil­i­ty. We are al­so look­ing at the type of arrange­ment that was done to have this train­er there. We are al­so com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the gym­nas­tics fed­er­a­tion to see whether or not he is fit to con­duct this train­ing and from what I know, cer­tain­ly based on what I have seen and what I know of the Jean Pierre Com­plex, it is not suit­ed, it is un­fit and it looks un­safe."

Cud­joe al­so used the op­por­tu­ni­ty to speak about plans for the re­fur­bish­ment of the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um and Jean Pierre Com­plex, not­ing that be­cause we were head­ing in­to an Olympic year there were no im­me­di­ate plans to close the fa­cil­i­ties with­out con­sul­ta­tion with the Na­tion­al Am­a­teur Ath­let­ics As­so­ci­a­tion and the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee.

She al­so said they are ex­pect­ing that all the work at the Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um in To­ba­go will be com­plet­ed by the end of the year since the con­trac­tors were now in the last phase of its re­fur­bish­ment.