Fed up they have not been paid for the past three months (March, April and May) of 2020, the coach­es of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion have agreed to ap­proach Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to as­sist them in get­ting the salaries owed to them.

They are com­plain­ing that Robert Hadad, chair­man of the FI­FA-ap­point­ed Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee and mem­bers deputy chair­man Judy Daniel and Nigel Ro­mano have been silent on the mat­ter.

Guardian Me­dia Sports reached out to chair­man Hadad via What­sApp on Mon­day but mes­sages to his cell­phone went unan­swered.

The coach­es, who with­held their names for fear of vic­tim­i­sa­tion, said they are fed up of not be­ing paid, par­tic­u­lar­ly amid a pan­dem­ic, al­though the FI­FA has made avail­able a Pan­dem­ic Re­lief Fund, in ad­di­tion to foot­ball grants to its Mem­ber As­so­ci­a­tions, how­ev­er, no monies have been paid to the TTFA to date.

In an in­ter­view on Mon­day the coach­es said: "By this week we in­tend to reach out to the Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to dis­cuss un­em­ploy­ment re­lief funds giv­en out, but noth­ing con­cern­ing the coach­es. At the end of the day, we are hu­mans too. You gave max­is, you gave the ho­tels in To­ba­go, you have every­thing in place, but at the end of the day we are hu­mans too."

They added: "We can't go to NIS (Na­tion­al In­sur­ance) to dis­cuss the grant be­cause we have not paid NIS, so we are no­body then?"

Hadad ap­pears to have his hands tied in a bat­tle to gain full con­trol of the em­bat­tled foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion from for­mer TTFA pres­i­dent William Wal­lace and the rest of his ex­ec­u­tive team of vice pres­i­dents Clynt Tay­lor, Joseph Sam Phillips and Su­san Joseph-War­rick, all of whom are bat­tling the sport's world gov­ern­ing body- FI­FA, for the right man­age the af­fairs of lo­cal foot­ball fol­low­ing their elec­tion back on No­vem­ber 24, 2019.

The last time the staff of the TTFA was paid, was in Feb­ru­ary when Ramesh Ramd­han, the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion's Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary bor­rowed mon­ey to pay salaries, due to the cash-strapped po­si­tion of the TTFA.

Since then a gar­nishee or­der in Feb­ru­ary by the for­mer tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor Kendall Walkes had put a freeze on the TTFA bank ac­counts, a freeze that was re­moved af­ter Walkes liq­ui­dat­ed the ac­counts months lat­er.

On Mon­day last, the oust­ed TTFA mem­bers agreed to take their fight to the High Court in Port-of-Spain af­ter re­mov­ing their chal­lenge against FI­FA from the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sports (CAS) in Lau­sanne, Switzer­land. The de­ci­sion to take their fight to the high court is a di­rect vi­o­la­tion of the FI­FA Statutes and the TTFA Con­sti­tu­tion and puts the coun­try in a po­si­tion to be banned.

Three days lat­er on May 28, the TTFA asked the FI­FA for me­di­a­tion which was even­tu­al­ly re­ject­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to the coach­es: "We have not heard any­thing about pay­ment of salary and that is dis­ap­point­ing. No­body can get on to Hadad, he hasn't been say­ing any­thing and he comes to fix the foot­ball."

The coach­es are al­so con­tend­ing that staff mem­bers, both the tech­ni­cal and ad­min­is­tra­tive staff, can be paid, de­spite chal­lenges to se­cure the use of the TTFA bank ac­counts. " You can pay the staff. The CFU can pay the staff, the mon­ey can come through them (CFU), it can come through CON­CA­CAF or it can come from the FI­FA di­rect, so it comes like they are on games. CON­CA­CAF paid mon­ey be­fore, di­rect to peo­ple's ac­counts," the coach­es ex­plained.

The coach­es' on­ly point of con­tact has been Ramesh Ramd­han, the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion's Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary, but Guardian Me­dia Sports learnt Ramd­han has had a gag or­der placed on him.

The tech­ni­cal staff com­pris­es- Ter­ry Fen­wick (Men’s Se­nior Team), Derek King (Men’s Un­der-20 Team), An­gus Eve (Men’s Un­der-17 Team), Kei­th Jef­frey (Men’s Un­der-15 Team), Richard Hood (Women’s Un­der-20 and Un­der-17 Teams) and Ja­son Spence (Women’s Un­der-15 Team) head­ed the var­i­ous tech­ni­cal staffs.