104 SporTT employees sent homeBy Renuka Singh
http://www.trinidadexpress.com/news/104_SporTT_employees_sent_home-113146634.htmlStory Created: Jan 8, 2011 at 10:47 PM ECT
Over 100 employees of the Sports Company of Trinidad and Tobago were summarily suspended on Friday as an audit of the "messy" financial documents discovered a $90 million discrepancy and a further $700 million "squandered" between the years 2004 and 2010, Sports Minister Anil Roberts confirmed yesterday.
And while several employees blamed anti-PNM sentiment for the dismissals, both Roberts and SporTT chairman Rhett Chee Ping yesterday denied all allegations of "political cleansing".
Roberts said the clean-up effort became necessary after the findings of a $90 million discrepancy and a further $700 million "squandered" between 2004 and 2010.
Roberts said while the $700 million amounted to budget allocations over a six-year period, auditors are yet to find the missing $90 million.
"We have $90 million disappeared somewhere," Roberts said in a telephone interview yesterday.
Roberts said the suspension and subsequent rehiring of several employees between this weekend and Monday were expected to plug the relentless financial haemorrhage within the organisation.
He said when he took office in June 2010, the auditors were called in to review the organisation and found that SporTT has not been audited since 2004. He said the process was now long and tiresome as auditors have to organise six years worth of paperwork.
"What was supposed to be a two to three-week job, now taking them over five months and it still going on," he said.
Despite the lack of audited financials, Roberts said the organisation still received over $100 million in annual budget allocations. Describing the organisation as a "bastion of wastage", he said the lack of audit documents made it impossible for the company to access the line of credit set up by the Government to pay contractors.
"The board is unable to draw on the funds because without updated financials the bank cannot give them access to the money. So the contractors who worked day and night to get the stadia ready cannot get paid yet," he said.
Chee Ping met with some 104 staff members at the Hasely Crawford Stadium at 2.45 p.m. on Friday and told them to go home and wait for notification on their job status.Though several workers baulked at the way the suspensions were meted out, Chee Ping defended his method.
"There really is no nice way to retrench people, but is not political. I don't play politics," Chee Ping said in a telephone interview yesterday.
He said after a meeting with the Central Audit Committee, he was informed that the organisation was "too top-heavy and bloated" and needed to be trimmed.
One employee, speaking with the Sunday Express under the condition of anonymity, said by 9.20 a.m. yesterday, he received a letter informing him of his redundancy.
"The letter states that I would be paid one month's salary in lieu of one month's notice and it said I would get my month's salary in seven days time and any outstanding money for overtime and vacation in 14 days time," he said.
"At the meeting we were told that the company was going to be restructured and with restructuring comes a loss of jobs and apparently we just have to deal with it," he said.
He said though the staff had questions, they were told that management would have to speak with "the Minister" before they could get answers.
"We asked about company issues like gratuity and overtime and they have to ask the Minister about that? Something not right with the way this was handled," he said.
"Some of us are wondering if it is a political clean-up, since senior staff are being fired but they keeping the junior staff," he said.
He said it was unfair and demoralising to be treated in such a manner. He said employees were being asked to wait through a tense weekend to learn whether they had a job or not.
Roberts did not comment on the way the situation was handled, but said while he had "absolutely nothing to do with the process", he commended the board's actions.
"I find the board take long to act. They were supposed to be doing this since June," he said.
Under the former sport minister Gary Hunt, SporTT was plagued with allegations of bad spending, including the infamous $2 million flag at the Stadium in Port of Spain, the over-budget and yet unfinished Brian Lara Stadium in Tarouba and millions spent to ready stadia for the Caribbean Games.
