KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Even though sports is not Sham­fa Cud­joe's forte, she says it will not di­min­ish her abil­i­ty to ef­fec­tive­ly man­age the Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs as a Min­is­ter's job is to pro­vide di­rec­tion.

In her first pub­lic out­ing fol­low­ing her re­as­sign­ment to the Min­istry, Cud­joe turned the sod for the pro­posed $29 mil­lion Moru­ga Youth Fa­cil­i­ty in Fifth Com­pa­ny yes­ter­day. The fa­cil­i­ty will be built on five acres of for­mer cane land. She told re­porters that even though she was not an ath­lete there have been min­is­ters in the past, who have served with­out hav­ing spe­cif­ic back­grounds re­lat­ed to their min­istries.

How­ev­er, she said the Min­istry deals with both sports and youth af­fairs and as a for­mer pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Youth Coun­cil and mem­ber of sev­er­al youth or­gan­i­sa­tions she has that ex­pe­ri­ence. She said she will work on get­ting more ac­tiv­i­ties done by the youth coun­cils in both is­lands.

"There is no re­quire­ment that says that as the Min­is­ter of Sport you have to be an ath­lete. I've said yes­ter­day and I am go­ing to say again to­day, this is not just the Min­istry of Sport, it is the Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs. I came out of the bel­ly of the youth move­ment of T&T. As I said be­fore, it is about lead­er­ship, it is about pro­vid­ing di­rec­tion and it is about get­ting the job done. I am go­ing to be fo­cus­ing on build­ing what has al­ready been es­tab­lished in the Min­istry of Sport. I think that the pre­vi­ous min­is­ter and min­is­ters be­fore would have set a good plat­form and my in­ten­tion is to build on that plat­form to con­tin­ue to ex­pand and ad­vance sports de­vel­op­ment in T&T. Al­so, I will fo­cus on youth de­vel­op­ment, stu­dent coun­cils, the Na­tion­al Youth Coun­cil and all the youth bod­ies through­out T&T," Cud­joe ex­plained.

On Mon­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley re­as­signed Cud­joe from the Min­istry of Tourism to the Min­istry of Sports and Youth Af­fairs. She re­placed Dar­ryl Smith, who was de­mot­ed, re­as­signed and then dis­missed in a 24-hour pe­ri­od.

Yes­ter­day, a snap­shot of a Face­book post by Cud­joe was be­ing shared on so­cial me­dia in which she stat­ed: "When you're bit­ten by your own dog, you're well bit­ten."

Some so­cial me­dia users be­lieved it was a re­ac­tion to her re­as­sign­ment. How­ev­er, Cud­joe said it was post­ed on Sat­ur­day be­fore she knew of the Cab­i­net reshuf­fle. She said it was a quote she learned from a rel­a­tive who had died and was buried on Sat­ur­day.

She said her ex­pe­ri­ence has been "so far so good" and she will be meet­ing with Min­istry staff at the var­i­ous of­fices and fa­cil­i­ties through­out the coun­try. She said she has al­ready met with the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary, deputy per­ma­nent sec­re­tary and em­ploy­ees at the Min­istry's head of­fice, which has ap­prox­i­mate­ly 120 em­ploy­ees. She said the Min­istry has a work­force of 400 em­ploy­ees.

Mean­while, there are con­tention over the site of the youth fa­cil­i­ty as farmer Rashad Ali said that it would be built on land he has rent­ed since Ca­roni (1975) Ltd op­er­at­ed. He said since 1980, he and his fa­ther plant­ed cane, and af­ter the sug­ar in­dus­try col­lapse, he switched to ground pro­vi­sions.

He said that last Wednes­day, he saw ma­chin­ery clear­ing the land with­out any con­sul­ta­tion with him. Af­ter re­port­ing the mat­ter to the Land Set­tle­ment Agency, he said the ma­chin­ery was stopped, but saw the launch of the project tak­ing place on the land.

Moru­ga MP Dr Lovell Fran­cis said that there was no veg­e­ta­tion on the land and that a small area was on­ly cleared to erect the tent for yes­ter­day's cer­e­mo­ny. Fran­cis said that the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries, the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands of­fice and Ude­cott were still in the process of sort­ing out the is­sue.

"As to the ac­tu­al 5-acre par­cel of land, there is a lot of land around here. It is no in­ten­tion of ours to take away any­body's agri­cul­tur­al land, more so at a time when we need added food pro­duc­tion so that mat­ter is be­ing sort­ed out at the mo­ment. We will en­sure that we have the right land for the youth fa­cil­i­ty and that the farmer has the right land for his agri­cul­ture so there is go­ing to be a win/win for every­body," Fran­cis ex­plained.

The project is be­ing fund­ed through the Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme and con­struc­tion is ex­pect­ed to be­gin in May by Yorke Struc­tures Ltd. It will in­clude a foot­ball field, meet­ing room, staff of­fices, phys­io­ther­a­py room, sick bay, con­fer­ence room and VIP lounge.

Cud­joe urged res­i­dents to pro­tect and make use of the fa­cil­i­ties as it has hap­pened that af­ter gov­ern­ment de­liv­ered sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties at cit­i­zens re­quest, they are un­der­utilised.