The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Another dogfight is brewing between the Ministry of Sport and the Trinidad and Tobago Football Association (TTFA), over Government funding,
This comes despite Prime Minister Kamla Persad Bissessar issuing a $9 million Cabinet note just over six months ago, and giving assurances that the men’s national football team will be taken care of all the way up to the 2015 CONCACAF Gold Cup.
The Cabinet note’s projected remuneration for the team technical staff of $3,104,000 for the period between November 2014 to June 2015, and an additional $3,878,888 sum to fund Trinidad and Tobago’s participation in the 2015 CONCACAF Gold Cup.
Now however, salary payments to coach Hart and his assistants King and Charles have stopped since February, and newly-installed Sports Minister Brent Sancho promises not to give any money to football, until audited accounts are submitted.
All this comes two months before the Soca Warriors are due to represent Trinidad and Tobago at the 2015 CONCACAF Gold Cup, starting on July 9 against Guatemala in Chicago. USA.
Three years previously, then Minister of Sport Anil Roberts also promised that no money would be given to football before audited accounts, from the TTFA were produced. The TTFA’s agent, and head of an Authorisation Committee, Anthony Harford, insisted they had complied.
The fallout was that Hutson Charles, Derek King and later installed head-coach Hart went unpaid for some time.
Sancho maintains the position he took as a private citizen, when he and other members of the 2006 national team, the Soca Warriors, took the Association and its adviser Jack Warner to court for promised financial incentives. They had been trying to get financial records from the TTFA dating back to the 2006 World Cup.
Sancho said yesterday: “It is up to them (the TTFA),” indicating that funds will be disbursed provided the Association meets the required criteria. “It is in their interest to do what is required.”
TTFA president Raymond Tim Kee said auditors KPMG have been engaged and promised to have the figures available in a couple of weeks. He says figures are readily available during the period when he took office from December 2012, but not those taken away when Sancho and the Soca Warriors levied on the local football body for outstanding payments awarded by the court.
Tim Kee says: “Remember, they took the computers. We have four auditors working on the books now, but it is difficult to get those before 2012.”
Before becoming Sport Minister, Sancho applauded Government’s gesture in making payment of arrears to members of the technical staff and players after the Caribbean Cup in 2014.
“We need to look at how we do things to make sure this does not happen again,” Sancho was quoted as saying in the November 22 edition of the Trinidad Express.
However, both the Minister of Sport and the TTFA president, have indicated a willingness to meet to resolve the brewing impasse.