VIN­ODE MAM­CHAN

Tak­ing de­ci­sions based on the cur­rent eco­nom­ic chal­lenges fac­ing the coun­try is be­ing mis­tak­en as a frontal at­tack on the T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB) by the SPORTT, ac­cord­ing to act­ing CEO, Ja­son Williams.

Williams in an ef­fort to ex­plain what led to this feel­ing by the T&TCB spoke to Guardian Me­dia Sports yes­ter­day and said that four mem­bers of the TTCB in­clud­ing pres­i­dent Az­im Bas­sarath re­cent­ly met with Ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer An­tho­ny Creed and him­self to dis­cuss con­tin­u­ing fund­ing for the na­tion­al body.

He said :"We met with Az­im Bas­sarath, Bal­dath Ma­habir, Sukesh Ma­ni­am and Ar­joon Ram­lal from the Crick­et Board re­cent­ly be­cause they had made a re­quest to meet with the min­is­ter of Sports to dis­cuss their fund­ing. We were told to meet with them and this we did. At that meet­ing we out­lined the fi­nan­cial hard­ships that the com­pa­ny is fac­ing, so that fund­ing the way we did it over the years was to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent now. The fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion is what it is in the coun­try at the mo­ment and we have to un­der­stand the lim­i­ta­tions. We told them this in De­cem­ber last year when we first met with them. At that point I made it clear that the on­ly mon­ey (SporTT) was get­ting was for salaries and not even util­i­ties. Re­mem­ber we have some mas­sive fa­cil­i­ties that we have to take care off and we are not even get­ting mon­ey for util­i­ties for these fa­cil­i­ties."

The T&TCB per­ma­nent staff is made up of sev­en and they have an­oth­er 10 wages that needs to be paid on a month­ly ba­sis.

Williams added, "When­ev­er we get ex­tra mon­ey, we are told ex­act­ly how to dis­burse it and for what. In light of this we told the Crick­et Board that the SPORTT board has tak­en a de­ci­sion that they will no longer fund the salaries and ad­min­is­tra­tive costs for NG­Bs. Fur­ther, Mr. Creed told the Crick­et Board that we are not say­ing that they will not get any fund­ing, but they must go back and re­vise their bud­get and come back to us."

He al­so added that, "They must list what fund­ing they need in or­der of pri­or­i­ty as we will no longer be able to take care of salaries and ad­min­is­tra­tive costs. The Board did as ad­vised, they re­vised their bud­get but the first four items in terms of pri­or­i­ty fund­ing were salaries, ad­min­is­tra­tive costs, le­gal costs and pro­fes­sion­al fees. I can­not un­der­stand how clear­er we could have made our­selves again."

Williams said that there is no at­tack on the TTCB be­cause of the strug­gles be­tween the board and SPORTT's chair­man. The chair­man Di­nanath Ram­nar­ine has al­ways made it to­tal­ly clear that he wants no part of any dis­cus­sion to do with any­thing re­lat­ed to crick­et. He has al­ways reclus­es him­self from crick­et­ing mat­ters and I want to make that abun­dant­ly clear."

Williams added, "Look at last week, net­ball called to in­form me that they need­ed mon­ey for sim­i­lar things and I had to let them know that we will no longer fa­cil­i­tate that type of fund­ing be­cause of a de­ci­sion that has been tak­en by the SPORTT board."

The T&TCB had orig­i­nal­ly sub­mit­ted a bud­get seek­ing $8.5M, but it was re­vised to $5.675M and re­sub­mit­ted to SPORTT.

Trea­sur­er of the T&TCB, Ma­ni­am told Guardian Medi­ua Sports that the board was not com­fort­able with SPORTT say­ing that there was mis-al­lo­ca­tion of funds that were re­ceived from the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of T&T (NGC) which is its ma­jor spon­sor. At the last meet­ing, Williams had asked the T&TCB for a copy of the au­dit that was done by NGC in­to their fund­ing.

He (Williams) said that he had con­cerns that NGC was not hap­py with the mis-al­lo­ca­tion of funds.

Ma­ni­am re­spond­ed, "This is a dan­ger­ous state­ment to make. Yes, there were some things that came out in the au­dit that NGC want­ed to dis­cuss with us and we did meet on it and they were hap­py at the end of the dis­cus­sion." He then ex­plained, "What had hap­pen was that funds that they had giv­en us for a par­tic­u­lar item was spent on the item, but some would have been used on oth­er items as well. It was nev­er mis-al­lo­ca­tion of funds. It was re-al­lo­ca­tion of funds. We dis­cussed this with NGC and they ex­plained that they would have liked if we could have writ­ten them on this, but they agreed that it was not stat­ed in the con­tract that we had with them and they are will­ing to dis­cuss hav­ing this done mov­ing for­ward."

Ma­ni­am said that it is pass­ing strange that some of the ques­tions posed to them dur­ing their meet­ing with Williams, were the same ones that were asked by Ram­nar­ine dur­ing a board meet­ing. "Williams doesn't know all those de­tails about the board. Imag­ine he wants a re­port on the mon­ey we spend on Zones and Af­fil­i­ates abut SPORTT does not give us mon­ey for this. Ques­tions like these were the ones be­ing asked by Ram­nar­ine at a board meet­ing, so it is pass­ing strange."