Pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ic Ad­min­is­tra­tion (NAAA) George Comis­siong is wel­com­ing the gov­ern­ment’s ef­fort to­wards the sup­port of sports in the na­tion­al bud­get on Mon­day.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, in his bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion in the par­lia­ment, an­nounced a $39 mil­lion al­lo­ca­tion which he des­ig­nat­ed to­wards sports clubs and com­mu­ni­ties.

Im­bert said the mon­ey to be used in 2024 will al­low for the fos­ter­ing and pro­mo­tion of com­mu­ni­ty sports, such as as­sist­ing lo­cal sport­ing clubs and or­gan­i­sa­tions in their host­ing and man­age­ment of com­mu­ni­ty sport­ing events and com­pe­ti­tions, spe­cial­ized train­ing at the com­mu­ni­ty lev­el, and the pro­cure­ment of sport­ing equip­ment for use in com­mu­ni­ties.

Im­bert’s bud­get was de­signed to pro­vide re­lief to many dis­ad­van­taged per­sons and come up with in­no­v­a­tive ideas and has since been wel­comed by many in the sport­ing fra­ter­ni­ty.

Im­bert al­so paid par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion to the de­vel­op­ment of the youth through up­grad­ing works to many fa­cil­i­ties.

Com­mis­siong told Guardian Me­dia Sports his ad­min­is­tra­tion: “ From an ath­let­ics per­spec­tive, the sport is over-cen­tral­ized with a heavy fo­cus on events at the dif­fer­ent sta­dia, es­pe­cial­ly the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo, Port-of-Spain. One of the pil­lars that my team (cur­rent Board) cam­paigned on at the last NAAATT elec­tions was the re­turn of ath­let­ics to the com­mu­ni­ties.”

“We have been strug­gling over the past two years to ful­fill that promise, giv­en the im­pact of COVID-19 and the ab­sence of fund­ing. Notwith­stand­ing, we firm­ly be­lieve that com­mu­ni­ty sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties are es­sen­tial to pro­vid­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for our youth, as­pir­ing sports­men and women, al­low­ing for tal­ent iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and de­vel­op­ment, of­fer­ing al­ter­na­tive and healthy recre­ation­al ac­tiv­i­ty for all, es­pe­cial­ly our youth, and the odd busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ty for small ven­dors and ser­vice providers.”

Com­mis­sion­ing al­so not­ed that Im­bert’s pro­pos­als sug­gest a link­ing of sport with com­mu­ni­ty fa­cil­i­ties such as com­mu­ni­ty cen­ters. “If so, I can read­i­ly en­vis­age the con­duct of re­me­di­al and make-up class­es for ath­letes at such venues to avoid them falling be­hind along with their use by lo­cal clubs and NSOs for the more the­o­ret­i­cal as­pects of ath­lete de­vel­op­ment and prepa­ra­tion,” Com­mis­siong ex­plained.

The gov­ern­ment al­so forged a part­ner­ship with the GC Fos­ter Col­lege of Phys­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion and Sport in Ja­maica to im­prove the coun­try’s per­for­mances in cy­cling, track and field, swim­ming, and foot­ball in the fu­ture.

Ac­cord­ing to the lo­cal track and field boss, what he got from the bud­get so far were wel­comed ini­tia­tives, but he was in­ter­est­ed in find­ing out more. He said: “ What seems to be a re­fo­cus­ing of SPORTT to­wards the de­vel­op­ment, main­te­nance, and op­er­a­tions of the sev­er­al and var­ied fa­cil­i­ties owned by the gov­ern­ment with what seems to be the es­tab­lish­ment of a Sports Com­mis­sion to treat with oth­er as­pects such as the fi­nanc­ing of teams.”

“The ref­er­ence to the re-es­tab­lish­ment of the JP Schmaltz Sport­ing Fa­cil­i­ty (Velo­drome) at Pa­lo Seco. As an ex-Trin­topec em­ploy­ee and some­one who was di­rect­ly in­volved with the op­er­a­tions of that fa­cil­i­ty over sev­er­al years, I can at­test to the val­ue of the fa­cil­i­ty to the neigh­bor­ing com­mu­ni­ties to the de­vel­op­ment of sports and sports­men in T&T.”

“How­ev­er, this has to be linked to the ad­di­tion­al fund­ing as pro­posed for com­mu­ni­ty sport­ing ini­tia­tives, a fa­cil­i­ty with­out reg­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties is es­sen­tial­ly a white ele­phant,” Com­mis­siong con­clud­ed.