Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young has cleared the air on whether the Youth Pro League can go ahead or not. There were con­flict­ing mes­sages from the Min­istry of Health and the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice on whether the league can kick-off in Au­gust. At Sat­ur­day’s vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence with the Min­istry of Health, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer (CMO) Dr Roshan Paras­ram said all events with chil­dren should be held back un­til Sep­tem­ber.

How­ev­er, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith said per­mis­sion was grant­ed from the health min­istry for the Youth Pro League to go on.

And at yes­ter­day’s vir­tu­al Min­istry of Health me­dia con­fer­ence, Young ad­dressed the mat­ter. He said, “The CMO’s ad­vice is ex­act­ly as he stat­ed but the reg­u­la­tions don’t pre­vent it so at the end of the day there is no law that is be­ing bro­ken but the med­ical ad­vice is for them just to be cau­tious so I don’t think this is a con­ver­sa­tion that can con­tin­ue to mush­room.”

Young con­firmed both he and the Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh has had con­ver­sa­tions with com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith “in­clud­ing on Sat­ur­day”.

The CMO has ad­vised that ac­tiv­i­ties with chil­dren be with­held for the next two months, “Chil­dren should have been held un­til Sep­tem­ber. The reg­u­la­tions, as far as I know, don’t speak to the age of per­sons be­ing able to con­duct any sort of ac­tiv­i­ty,” Dr Paras­ram said.

A source close to the league who spoke to us on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty said that "A de­ci­sion on whether or­gan­is­ers will ho­n­our the CMO’s ad­vice and post­pone the start of the league could be made as ear­ly as to­day when the mat­ter comes be­fore a board meet­ing of the league to­day."

When con­tact­ed by Guardian Me­dia Sports Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith said, "These com­ments con­tin­ue to do noth­ing oth­er than to con­fuse the life out of my Po­lice Of­fi­cers, as they are the in­di­vid­u­als who have to en­force the law, and like­wise par­ents as they are left to won­der if their chil­dren play­ing sport is against the law. As Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, to clar­i­fy this is­sue, the an­swer is no. There is no law pre­vent­ing any young per­son from par­tic­i­pat­ing in a sport. All that is re­quired is that ex­tra-cur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ty and sport, must not have more than the stip­u­la­tion of num­bers es­tab­lished in the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance Reg­u­la­tions. The CMO does not draft, ap­prove, or en­force laws. I have re­ceived ab­solute­ly no pol­i­cy from any Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial to stop any young per­son from tak­ing part in sport. In fact, as the COP, pre­vent­ing or try­ing to per­suade young peo­ple not to play sport af­ter be­ing boxed in their homes for months, is an av­enue that can frus­trate many young per­sons and hence their en­er­gies can very well be di­vert­ed in non-pro­duc­tive, if not crim­i­nal av­enues, hence these con­tin­u­ous com­ments try­ing to pre­vent young peo­ple from play­ing a sport, are in­deed a li­a­bil­i­ty from a TTPS per­cep­tive, and does not help us in our role and func­tion. These strange com­ments yet again, are said with­out tak­ing any con­sid­er­a­tion in­to the role of the TTPS, be­cause what is the TTPS sup­posed to do? Go to every sport­ing ground, every foot­ball game, and start check­ing ID cards to see dates of birth?

Like­wise, based on their log­ic, if an ath­lete is a 16 or 17 years’ old who is a very fit, healthy, high-in­ten­si­ty ath­lete or na­tion­al play­er in a con­tact sport, it be­comes a con­cern, but not if the ath­lete is 18 years or over. I chal­lenge them to show what da­ta they can pro­duce to show this. The CMO seems to have a con­cern about a 16 or 17-year-old play­ing sport, but he does not have a con­cern when a set of chil­dren are packed in­to a cin­e­ma watch­ing a movie.

Dozens of el­der­ly per­sons, 80 years of age and above, play­ing bin­go in an en­closed room, may be more sus­cep­ti­ble to get­ting the virus than the same num­ber of young, fit, healthy kids play­ing foot­ball, so the CMO may need to mon­i­tor such re­al con­cerns and not that of young per­sons try­ing to stay fit and healthy.

This can now al­so con­fuse Na­tion­al teams and Men and Women Club teams. The log­ic of the CMO and who­ev­er else wants to sup­port him is that if any­one is un­der 18 years, but on a Na­tion­al Se­nior team, or a Men or Women Club team, that they can be at risk to get­ting the Virus.

This makes very lit­tle sense, as again, there is noth­ing to show that a 16 or 17-year-old in a na­tion­al or club team is go­ing to be more prone to be­ing a pa­tient to COVID-19, to oth­ers who are 18 or 19 years on the same field.

There are how­ev­er sev­er­al mea­sures that can be used to safe­guard the con­cerns of the CMO, and it is not by telling young peo­ple not to play Sport, but sim­ple pro­to­cols pri­or to, and af­ter train­ing and tour­na­ment match­es, such as no hud­dling be­fore and af­ter games, no shar­ing of snacks etc, per­suade non-at­ten­dance of sup­port­ers, which are ba­sic poli­cies done in oth­er coun­tries."

The Youth Pro League was sched­uled to start last Sun­day with 12 teams tak­ing part in the com­pe­ti­tion. The clubs tak­ing part in the com­pe­ti­tion in­clude AC Port-of-Spain, QPCC, Mor­vant Cale­do­nia Unit­ed, W Con­nec­tion, Cen­tral FC, San Juan Jabloteh, Cunu­pia FC, Point Fortin Civic, Club San­do, Po­lice FC, De­fence Force and Ter­minix La Hor­quet­ta Rangers.