Foot­ball's world gov­ern­ing body, FI­FA, through the FI­FA For­ward Pro­gramme, has wired monies owed to the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) to be used to pay ref­er­ees. It hit its bank ac­count on Wednes­day, and as usu­al, it will take sev­er­al days to reach the in­tend­ed tar­get, the ref­er­ees.

On Thurs­day, TTFA pres­i­dent Kieron Ed­wards, who ad­mit­ted to hav­ing tak­en the past week to sort out the is­sue of the pay­ment to the ref­er­ees, told Guardian Me­dia Sports: "There was not an is­sue of pay­ing, the is­sue was that the FI­FA For­ward Grant was giv­en for ref­er­ees for the T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League (TTPFL), so if we had paid out of the nor­mal op­er­a­tional funds, then we would have end­ed up in a sit­u­a­tion of not be­ing able to utilise the grant. How­ev­er, that was ap­proved, it was sent from FI­FA, and we got con­fir­ma­tion on Thurs­day in terms of the funds be­ing trans­ferred from FI­FA to the TTFA's ac­count. As soon as it hits the ac­count, we will then trans­fer the funds to the Ref­er­ees As­so­ci­a­tion, and they will do the dis­burse­ments to the in­di­vid­ual ref­er­ees."

Quizzed as to when the ref­er­ees can ex­pect monies, Ed­wards said: "The nor­mal process, it nor­mal­ly takes about three days, from us to the as­so­ci­a­tion ac­count, and then they will do the dis­burse­ments. But every­thing is on stream with that, the funds were re­leased from FI­FA to our TTFA US ac­count, and then we will do the need­ful in terms of pay­ing the of­fi­cials.

"We had a meet­ing with them, we ex­plained the sit­u­a­tion and they were com­fort­able with it, but I be­lieve a bit more com­mu­ni­ca­tion needs to hap­pen be­tween of­fi­cials and the TTFA, be­cause the of­fi­cials are some­what in­de­pen­dent of the FA, so the nor­mal com­mu­ni­ca­tion through the FA doesn't nor­mal­ly trick­le down all the time to the of­fi­cials.

"Yes, they are part of the TTFA, but they have some lev­el of au­ton­o­my, in terms of keep­ing that cred­i­bil­i­ty from of­fi­cials, so we need to now, en­sure that, yes, they have that au­ton­o­my, but the com­mu­ni­ca­tion and the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the TTFA ad­min­is­tra­tion and the of­fi­cials are bet­ter and stronger go­ing for­ward."

Just over a week ago, word cir­cu­lat­ed about a pos­si­ble strike ac­tion by the na­tion's ref­er­ees and oth­er of­fi­ci­at­ing of­fi­cials due to un­paid monies. Ed­wards, then, as­sured that there was not go­ing to be any strike ac­tion, as he told Guardian Me­dia a week ago, the rea­sons why ru­mours of a strike sur­faced.

Ed­wards said: "The re­al­i­ty be­hind the whole ref­er­ees is­sue when it comes to Tier I and Tier II for last sea­son and this sea­son, last sea­son the funds for the TTPFL, based on rec­on­cil­i­a­tion from the pre­vi­ous or­gan­is­ers, CEO (chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer) and man­age­ment team of the League were not done, and when we came in we would have com­plet­ed that process with the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T (SporTT) by Feb­ru­ary of this year.

"There were one or two doc­u­ments that we had to pro­vide for the en­tire process of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion for the 2023/2024 sea­son, which we did, and a note was sent days be­fore the gen­er­al elec­tion to the Min­is­ter of Sport to get the re­leas­es. But know­ing the sit­u­a­tion around the elec­tions, it was held back un­til af­ter the elec­tions, but that was com­plet­ed.

"We would have ex­pressed the whole sit­u­a­tion of out­stand­ing pay­ments with the min­is­ter, and we were giv­en the as­sur­ances that this sit­u­a­tion would be sort­ed out for the 2023,2024 sea­son. When it comes to the 2024/2025 sea­son with out­stand­ing pay­ments to the ref­er­ees, we would have re­quest­ed through FI­FA to have the pay­ments through the FI­FA For­ward pro­gramme be is­sued for of­fi­cials, so that was a re­quest that we reached out to FI­FA with, which was ap­proved a month ago by the FI­FA Coun­cil be­fore the FI­FA Con­gress in Paraguay, and we are in the fi­nal stages of re­ceiv­ing those funds to pay for the 2024/2025 sea­son."

With the 2024/2025 sea­son sewn up by the De­fence Force, with MIC Cen­tral FC Re­boot and Mis­cel­la­neous Po­lice tak­ing the sec­ond and third po­si­tions, re­spec­tive­ly, of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing ref­er­ees, as­sis­tant ref­er­ees, and fourth of­fi­cials are de­mand­ing pay­ments. Ed­wards said in the past of­fi­cials were not paid for the sea­son, but now if pay­ments are late, it's late by a mere month or two.

He said, "The is­sue around it is not that we didn't want to pay be­cause we made some pay­ments to of­fi­cials in De­cem­ber and Jan­u­ary, but the way the FI­FA grant op­er­ates, if we con­tin­ue to make pay­ments to the ref­er­ees this sea­son, the funds would not be able to be utilised and when we have au­dit next year if we utilise those funds in oth­er places, it would raise a se­ri­ous is­sue with our FI­FA au­dit next year. So, we would have with­held mak­ing any pay­ments to the of­fi­cials un­til we re­ceived the FI­FA funds, which we would get."