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Tuesday, July 22, 2025

Minister Cudjoe defends basketball funding issue

by

Sports Desk
1096 days ago
20220722
Shamfa Cudoe, Minister of Sports and Community Defelopment.

Shamfa Cudoe, Minister of Sports and Community Defelopment.

The Min­istry of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment (MSCD) is adamant that "no Na­tion­al Gov­ern­ing Body of sport (NG­Bs) is treat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly, pref­er­en­tial­ly or with prej­u­dice in the dis­burse­ment of funds and al­lo­ca­tion of man­age­r­i­al at­ten­tion for im­prove­ment of their op­er­a­tions".

On Wednes­day evening, via me­dia re­lease, the min­istry sort to clar­i­fy and re­fute state­ments be­ing made in the pub­lic, specif­i­cal­ly an op­po­si­tion Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Ca­ro­nia Cen­tral, Arnold Ram, who spoke on the side of the Na­tion­al Bas­ket­ball Fed­er­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NBFTT) not get­ting sup­port from the Sports Min­istry for the na­tion­al Un­der-16 bas­ket­ball team's up­com­ing tour.

On Tues­day MP Ram wrote via a me­dia re­lease, "Once again, the Min­is­ter of Sports & Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment demon­strates her un­pa­tri­ot­ic na­ture & lack of in­sight in­to the po­si­tion for which she is en­trust­ed. Here lies an­oth­er demon­stra­tion of the Min­is­ter’s in­com­pe­tence as it re­lates to what is hap­pen­ing with­in her port­fo­lio, in the Min­istry and un­der her nose."

In re­sponse Min­is­ter Cud­joe stat­ed in a me­dia re­lease that, "The NBFTT needs to ac­knowl­edge the fact that their fund­ing re­quest was sub­mit­ted out­side of the pre­req­ui­site sub­mis­sion time­frame, and de­spite this, SporTT still re­viewed the sub­mis­sion and made at­tempts to se­cure fund­ing, even at this very last minute," the re­lease stat­ed and added that: "The Fed­er­a­tion was in­formed of the un­avail­abil­i­ty of fund­ing and that al­ter­na­tive at­tempts are be­ing made through the Min­istry of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment (MSCD). To date, SporTT is still work­ing with MSCD and the Min­istry of Fi­nance to­ward ser­vic­ing the NBFTT’s late re­quest and oth­er sim­i­lar re­quests from oth­er sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions."

This was the sec­ond time this month, the Min­is­ter of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Sham­fa Cud­joe has been forced to re­ply to al­le­ga­tions re­lat­ed to her min­istry's in­abil­i­ty to pro­vide time­ly fund­ing to na­tion­al sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions which have sub­mit­ted an ap­pli­ca­tion for fund­ing late.

On the week­end, the Sports Min­is­ter blast­ed the Aquat­ic Sports As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (ASATT) for at­tempt­ing to play the vic­tim of not get­ting gov­ern­ment fund­ing on Fri­day, when ac­tu­al­ly the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s late sub­mis­sion for fund­ing caused its demise.

A no­tice post­ed on an In­sta­gram ac­count ttowa­ter­po­lo on Fri­day evening blam­ing the woes of the na­tion­al team on MSCD forced Min­is­ter Cud­joe to re­tort: “The pol­i­cy is that re­quests must be sub­mit­ted at least eight weeks be­fore the event, you sub­mit mere two weeks ago and ex­pect mag­ic. Howwww????”

The NBFTT is the lat­est re­cip­i­ent of the Min­is­ter's scold­ing which came in re­sponse to the back­lash re­ceived by the sports min­istry for not giv­ing fi­nan­cial sup­port to the na­tion­al girls' Un­der-16 bas­ket­ball team due to com­pete at next week's Cen­trobas­ket Qual­i­fiers in Nicaragua.

The re­lease stat­ed: "On June 10, 2022, the NBFTT sub­mit­ted an IN­COM­PLETE ap­pli­ca­tion for fund­ing to par­tic­i­pate in a tour­na­ment in Nicaragua. SporTT im­me­di­ate­ly made queries and re­quest­ed the ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion.

"On June 28, 2022, mere three weeks be­fore the tour­na­ment, NBFTT sub­mit­ted the out­stand­ing in­for­ma­tion to com­plete the ap­pli­ca­tion. Sport­ing Bod­ies are well aware that they are re­quired to sub­mit their re­quests for fund­ing sup­port at least three months be­fore the sched­uled event or pro­gramme.

"It is im­por­tant to note that at this time, the NBFTT is delin­quent in pro­vid­ing to SporTT (the agency un­der whose re­mit the Fed­er­a­tion falls) its au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments for the years 2020 and 2021. Au­dit­ed fi­nan­cials are key in pro­vid­ing ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy with­in an or­gan­i­sa­tion.

"While these doc­u­ments re­main out­stand­ing the NBFTT will not be ful­ly com­pli­ant with the pro­to­cols of SporTT. Be­ing in com­pli­ance en­sures that the gov­ern­ing body, in this case, NBFTT, the man­ag­ing body, in this case, SporTT, and the gov­ern­ment can be ful­ly ac­count­able, re­spon­si­ble and trans­par­ent when it comes to spend­ing tax­pay­ers’ monies.

"SporTT pro­vides both tech­ni­cal and fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance to NG­Bs to­ward en­sur­ing that their au­dit­ed fi­nan­cials are of an ac­cept­able stan­dard. NBFTT should make every ef­fort to ac­cess these much-need­ed ser­vices."

On Tues­day, coach of the youth team, Learie Sandy, a for­mer na­tion­al play­er, start­ed a go­fundme page in aid of his team who is slat­ed to com­pete at the Women’s Cen­trobas­ket U-17 Qual­i­fiers in Nicaragua from Wednes­day to Ju­ly 31. It stat­ed that the team is seek­ing TT$183,060 (US$27,000). As of 5 pm yes­ter­day, some $31,280 (US$4,600) had been raised.

Just yes­ter­day, the NBFTT sent out its own re­lease shar­ing that coach Sandy and his staff have fi­nalised the 12-play­er ros­ter who will rep­re­sent T&T at the Qual­i­fiers, from Wednes­day un­til Ju­ly 31 in Man­agua, Nicaragua.

How­ev­er, their trip re­mains in jeop­ardy but the Min­is­ter con­firmed in the re­lease that her min­istry and SporTT have not turned a blind eye to the na­tion­al U-16 girls' team.

The min­istry's re­lease stat­ed: "The NBFTT needs to ac­knowl­edge the fact that their fund­ing re­quest was sub­mit­ted out­side of the pre­req­ui­site sub­mis­sion time­frame, and de­spite this, SporTT still re­viewed the sub­mis­sion and made at­tempts to se­cure fund­ing, even at this very last minute. The Fed­er­a­tion was in­formed of the un­avail­abil­i­ty of fund­ing and that al­ter­na­tive at­tempts are be­ing made through the Min­istry of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment (MSCD).

"To date, SporTT is still work­ing with MSCD and the Min­istry of Fi­nance to­ward ser­vic­ing the NBFTT’s late re­quest and oth­er sim­i­lar re­quests from oth­er sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions."

The re­lease added that SporTT and MSCD by ex­ten­sion, con­tin­ue to work dili­gent­ly to sup­port all na­tion­al gov­ern­ing bod­ies in their pur­suit of sport­ing ex­cel­lence.

"We urge all NG­Bs to do their part and prop­er­ly play their role in metic­u­lous­ly man­ag­ing the busi­ness of sport, prac­tic­ing dis­ci­pline and or­der­li­ness in the con­duct of their in­ter­nal af­fairs, and com­ply­ing with SporTT’s hum­ble re­quest to sub­mit their ap­pli­ca­tions for sup­port in a whole­some fash­ion and on time."


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