T&T Au­to­mo­bile Sports As­so­ci­a­tion (TTASA) pres­i­dent Fy­zo­ol Madan says the forex prob­lems plagu­ing this coun­try have caused his body to be de­mot­ed to an as­so­ciate mem­ber of the Fed­er­a­tion of In­ter­na­tion­al Au­to­mo­bile As­so­ci­a­tion (FIA).

At Fri­day’s an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing (AGM) in Paris, the FIA an­nounced that T&T was no longer a full mem­ber of the body and as such had rel­e­gat­ed the lo­cal sports’ gov­ern­ing body to an as­so­ciate mem­ber.

TTASA has been ow­ing to the in­ter­na­tion­al body $80,000 in fees for the last two years but Madan told Guardian Me­dia Sports on Sat­ur­day that while his body has the rel­e­vant mon­ey to make the pay­ment to the FIA, the is­sue is chang­ing it in­to eu­ros is chal­leng­ing. He said, “It is be­cause of the for­eign ex­change. We can­not get the for­eign ex­change. If you go to the bank now, you get $100 or $200, it is $TT40k we have to pay to FIA and we have to con­vert that and it’s a tug re­al­ly for us to get that mon­ey.”

The de­mo­tion means TTASA has no say at the in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el with no rights to vote at as­sem­bly meet­ings.

How­ev­er, while some mem­bers of the lo­cal rac­ing fra­ter­ni­ty la­belled it a ‘dis­grace’, the TTASA pres­i­dent was adamant the coun­try wasn’t miss­ing out on much be­ing an as­so­ciate mem­ber.

Madan said, “I wouldn’t spend the club mon­ey or even my mon­ey to go in­to a meet­ing to vote and do all these scan­dalous trav­el­ling, that is wast­ing mon­ey. At this time, it doesn’t even make sense of be­ing a full mem­ber of FIA. T&T doesn’t even need that. We don’t have FIA races here. We have a lot more im­por­tant things to deal with at this time.”

Madan, who has been pres­i­dent of TTASA for the last four years re­as­sured the pub­lic of his as­so­ci­a­tion’s will­ing­ness to pay the FIA but was adamant there was on­ly so much he could do. “This will not be a quick fix due to the for­eign ex­change but as soon as pos­si­ble in the new year we are go­ing to try to get this mon­ey,” he said.

He not­ed once the debt is paid off TTASA will be re­in­sti­tut­ed as a full mem­ber of the in­ter­na­tion­al body.

The news comes on the heels of a tur­bu­lent end to the year for the TTASA pres­i­dent who saw sev­er­al mem­bers re­sign from his as­so­ci­a­tion as well as grow­ing crit­i­cism for his han­dling of the as­so­ci­a­tion’s con­sti­tu­tion. It was re­port­ed that he was seek­ing a third term in of­fice as pres­i­dent when the cur­rent con­sti­tu­tion on­ly al­lows for a sit­ting pres­i­dent to serve two terms. In mid-No­vem­ber, Min­is­ter of Sport and Youth Af­fairs Sham­fa Cud­joe said she was forced to halt the al­leg­ed at­tempt.