PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, (CMC) – President of the Trinidad & Tobago Cricket Board Azim Bassarath appealed to the government of the two-island republic to conduct a full audit of the operations of the Sport Company of T&T.The board of the government agency, which is for all intents and purposes the country’s national sports commission, was relieved of its responsibilities by the Cabinet last week, following the presentation of an audit into the Ministry of Sport’s controversial Life Sport programme.
“We applaud the Government for initiating an investigation into the Life Sport programme and the subsequent actions taken in the light of what has been revealed,” said Bassarath in a media release.
“However, we feel that the work is half-complete until a similar scrutiny is made of the way SPORTT disbursed its funds.”
Bassarath lamented that the T&TCB’s proposals and appeals for financial help for local cricket had been ignored over the last four years by then Minister of Sports Anil Roberts.
He noted a newspaper report in August 2013 stated that SPORTT had given over US $500,000 to the T&TCB out of a total of US $4.5 million in the last fiscal year.
Bassarath said he challenged officials of SPORTT on the figure and they confirmed that just over US $6,000 had been disbursed directly to the local governing body and another US $300,000 was given to various cricket affiliated organisations.
“So it is passing strange that the claim that the T&TCB has been receiving funding from the Ministry of Sport and the Sport Company of T&T when it is clearly not so,” said Bassarath.
“We have been starved and deprived of funds for the development of local cricket for the past four years.”
He said: “We are not aware who received the [rest of the money] that they indicated was allocated to the various cricket bodies affiliated to the T&TCB. I want SPORTT to identify these bodies and indicate how they are affiliated to us.”
Roberts, under whose ministry SPORTT and the Life Sport programme was administered, resigned from the portfolio and also as Member of Parliament for D’Abadie/O’Meara last month.