Af­ter ex­act­ly a month since the an­nounce­ment that non-con­tact sport could re­sume, the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion is still await­ing ap­proval from Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer (CMO) Dr Roshan Paras­ram for use of the Ed­die Tay­lor Ten­nis Courts in St Clair.

Port-of-Spain May­or Joel Mar­tinez and the T&T Ten­nis As­so­ci­a­tion have been at odds over the util­i­sa­tion of the courts which the ten­nis as­so­ci­a­tion, un­der the lead­er­ship of Hay­den Mitchell, has ap­plied to use since May 10 when the an­nounce­ment was made.

Mitchell said he was ex­pect­ing that af­ter the an­nounce­ment, that the city cor­po­ra­tion would have en­sured the readi­ness of the fa­cil­i­ty since so many peo­ple de­pend on it for their liveli­hood and oth­er use.

"I ex­pect­ed that the en­ti­ties that are charged with pro­vid­ing ser­vices for the peo­ple of the coun­try, would have used the down-time from the COVID-19 pe­ri­od to pre­pare so that once things were opened up, there would be a smooth tran­si­tion.

"As a coun­try, we have asked pri­vate busi­ness­es to ex­am­ine how they de­liv­er ser­vices to their cus­tomers. The same must be done for those that pro­vide ba­sic ser­vices that af­fect the man in the street.”

Mar­tinez, who had been on a tour of dif­fer­ent fa­cil­i­ties, told Guardian Me­dia Sports on Tues­day that: "The rea­son giv­en was that the pub­lic health doc­tor, who is sup­posed to be the per­son we are fol­low­ing the process with, has in­di­cat­ed that be­cause it is a pub­lic court, they have to en­sure that the pub­lic space is main­tained in a par­tic­u­lar man­ner and they would have ad­di­tion­al re­stric­tions than on a pri­vate court."

He not­ed: "On a pub­lic court there is a cer­tain amount of li­a­bil­i­ty that the cor­po­ra­tion would car­ry. Since the COVID-19, they are the ones to de­ter­mine whether the courts can re­open, and they have deemed the courts un­able to be opened at this time."  

The ten­nis as­so­ci­a­tion was hop­ing to be the first sport to re­sume ac­tion af­ter it re­vealed its 'Re­turn to Ten­nis' ini­tia­tive more than a month and a half ago, and the St Clair fa­cil­i­ty is the on­ly one that is not be­ing used for the pro­gramme. Mitchell said fa­cil­i­ties in Ch­agua­nas, the Tran­quil­i­ty courts on Vic­to­ria Av­enue in Port of Spain and the Coun­try Club in Mar­aval at cur­rent­ly be­ing used for the ten­nis ini­tia­tive.

Mitchell ex­plained that while the sport of golf was in full swing, the sport of ten­nis, which is an­oth­er non-con­tact sport, was still be­ing made to wait to use pub­lic fa­cil­i­ties, al­though a com­pre­hen­sive guide­line of what need­ed to be done, was giv­en to the cor­po­ra­tion since May 10.

But ac­cord­ing to Mar­tinez: "We are await­ing a word from the CMO Dr Paras­ram to de­ter­mine if it is ok, or what are the guide­lines that will have to fol­low when it is open. The ten­nis as­so­ci­a­tion did send some be­hav­iour guide­lines on how they are go­ing to op­er­ate, but it doesn't mean that be­cause they have sent that, means that we have the rights to open it. So we have to wait on clear­ance from pub­lic health and once we get clear­ance from the pub­lic health that the courts could open, the courts will be opened."

Mean­while,  Mitchell in an at­tempt to crys­talise the guide­lines for use of the fa­cil­i­ty said: "All they have to do is write to the pro­ce­dure, in terms of what hap­pens when peo­ple come. They have a doc­u­ment, they have a guide­line, they have to put up their hand-wash­ing and that kind of thing. And then the oth­er thing they have to do in­ter­nal­ly is to de­cide how they are go­ing to sani­tise the bath­rooms.

"You just have to have a record of who com­ing so if it is you have con­tact trac­ing, you want to know who came and when which is what you have to do when you are book­ing courts any­way."