There are two con­tra­dict­ing dates for a pro­posed spe­cial gen­er­al meet­ing (SGM), which will de­ter­mine whether the Squash As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T’s board is re­moved.

At­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing SquashTT’s board and a group of mem­bers seek­ing to vote out the board at a spe­cial gen­er­al meet­ing have op­pos­ing views as to which date—Oc­to­ber 22, as stat­ed by the board, or No­vem­ber 4, as stat­ed by the group—is valid.

The mem­ber group is ac­cus­ing SquashTT’s board of il­le­gal­ly fail­ing to con­vene a spe­cial meet­ing by Oc­to­ber 6, while the SquashTT board has re­spond­ed by say­ing at­tempts to re­move it are un­con­sti­tu­tion­al.

Ac­cord­ing to SquashTT’s by-laws, a spe­cial meet­ing is to be called with­in three weeks of a writ­ten re­quest for a meet­ing.

A let­ter, cit­ing con­cerns about the trans­paren­cy, gov­er­nance, man­age­ment and lead­er­ship of the na­tion­al squash as­so­ci­a­tion, was sub­mit­ted on Sep­tem­ber 15.

The cor­re­spon­dence met the re­quired quo­ta, as it was signed by 14 mem­bers.

As stat­ed in Sec­tion 12 of SquashTT’s by-laws, “The di­rec­tors shall, on the req­ui­si­tion of five per­cent of the mem­bers of SquashTT that have a right to vote at the meet­ing req­ui­si­tioned, forth­with con­vene a meet­ing of mem­bers, and in the case of such req­ui­si­tion, the fol­low­ing pro­vi­sions shall have ef­fect.

“If the di­rec­tors do not, with­in twen­ty-one days from the date of the req­ui­si­tion be­ing so de­posit­ed, pro­ceed to con­vene a meet­ing, the req­ui­si­tion­ists or any of them may them­selves con­vene the meet­ing.”

The board cur­rent­ly con­sists of eight mem­bers: the pres­i­dent, Di­ane Julien; Vergil Chat­ter­goon (vice pres­i­dent); Craig Be­har­ry (trea­sur­er); Pe­ter Pirtheesingh (sec­re­tary); Ramesh De­ok­iesingh; Shel­don Skeete; and Faith Gillezeau.

On Oc­to­ber 6, the day the spe­cial gen­er­al meet­ing was due, the board’s at­tor­neys wrote to SquashTT’s mem­ber­ship, claim­ing that at­tempts by mem­bers to re­move it were “un­rea­son­able and un­law­ful”.

The at­tor­neys ac­cused the dis­sent­ing group of fail­ing to pro­vide ev­i­dence to sup­port its claims.

“My clients con­tend that such ac­tion is pre­ma­ture and goes against the rule of law in terms of due process and the right to be heard.

“Draft­ing a res­o­lu­tion to re­move the Board be­fore giv­ing the Board an op­por­tu­ni­ty to be heard is capri­cious and bi­ased, to say the least, and breach­es the foun­da­tion­al prin­ci­ples of fair play and good gov­er­nance es­tab­lished by the Olympic Char­ter.

“It is trite law that the re­moval of board mem­bers by mem­ber ac­tion in re­sponse to un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed al­le­ga­tions risks vi­o­lat­ing the prin­ci­ples of nat­ur­al jus­tice.”

The board’s at­tor­neys de­nied al­le­ga­tions of gov­er­nance fail­ures, a lack of trans­paren­cy, fi­nan­cial mis­man­age­ment, demon­strat­ing a gen­er­al lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, breach of fidu­cia­ry du­ty and a fail­ure to com­ply with and ad­here to safe­guard­ing poli­cies.

On Oc­to­ber 17, at­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing “the req­ui­si­tion­ists” replied to the board’s le­gal let­ter, stat­ing its re­sponse was un­ac­cept­able and in­com­plete.

“Para­graph 3 of your let­ter false­ly as­serts that no ev­i­dence was pro­vid­ed to sup­port the claims. This is demon­stra­bly in­cor­rect. On Sep­tem­ber 15, 2025, Mr Agos­ti­ni sent a 91-page bun­dle of sup­port­ing doc­u­ments to the board via hy­per­link,” the let­ter said.

The let­ter ac­cused the board of abuse of au­thor­i­ty, con­demn­ing it for fail­ing to call the spe­cial gen­er­al meet­ing with­in three weeks of the re­quest.

On Oc­to­ber 16, SquashTT’s Sec­re­tary Ramesh De­ok­iesingh is­sued a no­tice say­ing that the meet­ing would take place on Oc­to­ber 22 at the Pointe-a-Pierre Golf Club.

The req­ui­si­tion­ists is­sued an­oth­er le­gal let­ter in re­sponse, stat­ing that the pro­posed date was il­le­gal, as the board missed its dead­line to call a date.

In­stead, the req­ui­si­tion group con­vened the meet­ing on No­vem­ber 4 at 6.30 pm at Cas­ca­dia Ho­tel in St Ann’s.

“The Board of Di­rec­tors of SquashTT here­by of­fi­cial­ly de­clares that it does not recog­nise the spe­cial gen­er­al meet­ing pur­port­ed­ly sched­uled by cer­tain mem­bers for No­vem­ber 4 at 6.30 pm at the Cas­ca­dia Ho­tel, St Ann’s. The meet­ing is null, void, and unau­tho­rised, as it fails to com­ply with the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s by-laws and the Com­pa­nies Act,” SquashTT’s board wrote in re­sponse to the group’s an­nounce­ment.

Back in Sep­tem­ber, Guardian Sport re­port­ed sev­er­al con­cerns raised against the SquashTT board by a group of mem­bers.

• Im­prop­er Di­rec­tor List­ing on Com­pa­ny Reg­istry: Last May, SquashTT’s board is­sued no­tice of change of di­rec­tors for the as­so­ci­a­tion’s reg­is­tered com­pa­ny. Three of those named—Lisa Year­wood, God­frey Wei and Earl Wil­son—were not di­rec­tors and did not ap­prove their reg­is­tra­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to the Com­pa­nies Act, it is a pos­si­ble crim­i­nal of­fence to know­ing­ly reg­is­ter in­cor­rect in­for­ma­tion. In re­sponse, SquashTT pres­i­dent Julien said the change of di­rec­tors was re­quest­ed on No­vem­ber 8, 2024—a day af­ter the elec­tion. “It took much longer than we an­tic­i­pat­ed, as the firm we hired faced chal­lenges. This has been re­solved,” Julien said.

• Un­ad­dressed Com­plaints In­volv­ing Mi­nors: In June, board mem­ber Faith Gillezeau wrote to the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee, com­plain­ing of im­prop­er con­duct by a se­nior play­er dur­ing the 2024 Caribbean Squash Cham­pi­onships in Guyana.

The group of mem­bers ac­cused the board of fail­ing to take ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion to pro­tect ju­nior play­ers.

“We as­signed a dis­ci­pli­nary com­mit­tee to in­ves­ti­gate. The find­ings were sent to all par­ties and the Safe Sport Com­mis­sion. The case was deemed closed,” Julien said in re­sponse.

• Man­age­ment Con­cerns: Ac­cord­ing to the writ­ten re­quest for a spe­cial gen­er­al meet­ing, “SquashTT is in­debt­ed to coach­es and man­agers col­lec­tive­ly in the sum of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $90,000 for re­im­burse­ment for train­ing (since 2023); salaries for Ju­ly and Au­gust 2025; re­im­burse­ment for ac­com­mo­da­tion for Ju­nior CASA; and re­im­burse­ment for air­fare/ac­com­mo­da­tion for Ju­nior CASA.”

In re­sponse, SquashTT said the out­stand­ing fig­ure in­cludes a debt from 2023 for the pay­ment of the lev­el 3 cer­ti­fi­ca­tions in Eu­rope for a coach, in­clud­ing ac­com­mo­da­tion/flights and course fees.

• Poor Tour­na­ment Prepa­ra­tion: Guardian Sport un­der­stands that the se­nior na­tion­al team has not trained since 2020.

Mean­while, a lack of prepa­ra­tion for the Pan Amer­i­can Squash Cham­pi­onship in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in Au­gust re­sult­ed in play­ers drop­ping out. In re­sponse, SquashTT said it has been work­ing to im­prove its chan­nels of com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

“We are com­mit­ted to ex­pand­ing our net­work to en­sure that we re­ceive time­ly in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing events, which has been chal­leng­ing for us in the past.”