By Anil Roberts (Trinidad Guardian)
850 million dollars to construct a state of the art sporting facility in a remote, unpopulated area of T&T can only be described as utter madness.
Facilities do not create world class athletes on their own. If this were the case, our national football teams would not now be struggling, as we have, per capita, the best football stadia in the western hemisphere. I have thought long and hard, searching for one, single reason why this facility should be constructed and quite frankly I have come up empty.
Minister Lenny Saith’s contention that constructing the Complex will help curb crime is totally preposterous. In order for sport, culture and the arts to effectively influence young people in a positive way, the activities must be taken to them, not vice versa. Sport, culture and arts programs must be placed in the communities.
The “build it and they will come” philosophy has been tried, tested and has failed in many developed and developing nations for decades. Consider for a moment the transport costs for the nation’s youth to arrive on a daily basis to this facility. Furthermore, we are yet to hear about concrete plans to begin construction of the major interchange between the Churchill-Roosevelt Highway and the Uriah Butler Highway and its subsidiary on and off-ramps along the east-west corridor.
This means that, even for those who can afford the extra transport costs, the time lost in traveling to and from this venue will render time-management of student-athletes almost impossible.
Academic achievements will ultimately suffer and parents will then be forced to prevent their children from continued involvement in the sporting programmes at the complex. Please keep in mind that years of neglect, nonchalance and a dismissive attitude toward sport has rendered our nation’s sporting culture as secondary.
We have and continue to place supreme importance on an extremely accelerated educational system above and beyond all else. Now, miraculously, the Government expects that construction of “PIARCO II” will convert sporting lethargy into sporting passion.
Furthermore, the contention that this oversised facility is an absolute necessity in fulfilling the high performance section of the National Sports Policy is a blatant, unadulterated fallacy. This component can be satisfied in a number of diverse, cost-effective ways.
For example, by granting UWI approximately $80 million to complete and expand its SPEC facilities to include sports medicine facilities, an astroturf, 250m wooden, covered cycling track, indoor tennis courts, extra dormitories and other facilities as deemed necessary.
Then the Government must mandate UWI to offer full scholarships to the nation’s elite level athletes to continue training locally under the best coaches. If this collaboration with UWI is not desirable, then the National Hockey Centre could be transformed into a national training centre (for all major sports) for a cost of under $200 million (this figure is extremely exaggerated due to the ridiculously obscene comparative figure of 850 million dollars). Both of these locations are closer to more densely populated areas than Tarouba.
One basic tenet of all successful business practices is location, location, location. Sport is big business.
Yet it seems that the Government does not have to apply the same stringent economic principles when spending taxpayers’ money as in the case of capital expenditure by the private sector. At this juncture, let me simply use one element of the project to illustrate my point:
A 50-metre, state of the art swimming facility, for training and competition, can be built for between 8 to 12 million dollars. Obviously for this complex, the Government may have budgeted well above this figure.
For a pool of that size to be economically viable on a purely local basis, a population size of 500,000 is necessary within a radius of a 30-minute drive. All I can say here is, GOOD LUCK!
Now, with an influx of international athletes, this base population figure can and will be reduced. However, a vigorous international marketing campaign and more, importantly, worldwide swimming contacts are needed. Unfortunately for us here in T&T, we have not even been able to effectively market our very own carnival, our beaches, our culture and music, our flora and fauna, our cheap shopping (relative to other countries) or even our climate. Now, all of a sudden, we are going to be able to market an $850 million sporting facility in the bush.
It is clear that, just as our five stadia continue to be a drain on the treasury, so shall be the “PIARCO II” Sports Complex.
It is an undeniable fact that sporting programmes and greater opportunities for the nation’s youth to develop character and utilise their time in a productive, positive manner, will have a great effect on crime reduction. The problem in this instance is that building an extravagant sporting complex is simply not the answer.
In 2002 I had the opportunity of working alongside the Minister of Sport, Roger Boynes, and Allison Ayres in developing a national programme called “No Time for Crime.”
After months of work, the programme was shelved because the budget of between $9 million to $17 million a year was deemed excessive. This was a programme, which would have provided the nation’s youth with additional sporting activities for eight months of the year in every single community across the country.
The programme involved competitions in wind-ball cricket, small goal football, basketball and netball.
All competitions were to be held at night, between the hours of eight and one o’clock, in order to occupy their leisure time at night with constructive activities. Entertainment was to be provided at all venues. All existing courts across the country were to be lit and renovated.
Existing community leaders were to be employed to organise and manage competitions. Motivational and inspirational speakers were to be hired to address the youth (Ato Boldon, Brian Lara, George Bovell III, Emile Abraham, Dwight Yorke, Stern John, Dexter Skeene, Dion La Focaude, Ron La Forest, Nigel Grovesnor etc).
Community coaches were to be trained as talent scouts. The country was to be inundated with billboards featuring our national sporting heroes, stating, “ NO TIME FOR CRIME”.
Play-off matches and award ceremonies were to be featured by all segments of the media. Companies were to provide the most disciplined players and teams with internships.
This ‘No Time For Crime’ programme was also to exist simultaneously with the National Football Development Programme, a compulsory, non-contact, martial arts programme in all primary schools, a talent identification programme and many more specific sport developmental programmes. During that period all were shelved for being too costly. Now I am reading and hearing that the very same ‘jefes’ in the Cabinet have approved an $850 million White Elephant in Tarouba!
Why Tarouba?
Why on prime agricultural land? In 20 years our children will be starving but they could always take an excursion to see the Great White Elephant, overgrown with bush! Why this sudden interest in sport after 43 years of neglect? Could it be that it is politically expedient to pour the first bag of concrete on fertile Caroni lands under the guise of a tribute to Brian Lara, rather than for hotels, high-end townhouses, golf courses, malls and casinos? Who knows, only time will tell if we, the people, allow this Tarouba madness to continue.