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Author Topic: Cox questions $60,000 a month for Malabar FC.  (Read 553 times)

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Offline Sando prince

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Cox questions $60,000 a month for Malabar FC.
« on: September 14, 2014, 11:05:49 PM »
Cox questions $60,000 a month for Malabar FC.
By Kalifa Clyne (Guardian).


The signature of the Ministry of Sport’s  Permanent Secretary Ashwin Creed, who has just gone on pre-retirement leave, is on a document giving approval to raise funding for a Malabar football team.

“Why is Malabar FC in receipt of $60,000 a month from the Ministry of Sport?” asked MP for Laventille East/Morvant Donna Cox Friday as she contributed to the debate on the Appropriations (Finances 2015) Bill in Parliament.

Cox read from a document in which the football club requested an increase in funding to $80,000. “There is a note on the letter signed by Mr Creed, recommended as per policy on the third of the seventh month 2014.” Creed was supposedly on pre-retirement leave when this would have been approved.

“I want to know what policy exists in the Ministry of Sport that a ministry sponsors a football team,” Cox said. “Because money is supposed to go to the national sporting organisations. If the community is having something, it is different, but to sponsor a team every month to the tune of $60,000? I feel we need an explanation for this. “Where was this policy advertised? I have sporting groups in my constituency. I have teams in my constituency. All of us have teams.”

She said she had read several reports in the newspapers, including a recent report where T&T Cricket Board president Azim Bassarath complained of a lack of funding. “We have national sporting bodies crying out for funds, and yet one club, who is not a member of the professional football league, getting that amount of money.”

Cox also discussed inconsistencies she had discovered in her own constituency stemming from the Life Sport programme, which was recently shut down  and is now subject to a criminal investigation. The programme, in an audit earlier this year, was revealed to involve fraudulent activities, financial inconsistencies and corruption. Cox said she had seen an invoice for the maintenance of the Laventille Recreation Ground from Reno Energy Company Ltd dated January 31, for $78,200 per month.

She said it was strange to her, considering that the San Juan Laventille Regional Corporation had said it cleaned the Morvant Recreation Ground twice monthly. It became more strange when Cox read one of the items from the invoice which said: “Maintain all lines to basketball court.”

“That’s the funny part. Morvant Recreation Ground has no basketball court. Maintain all lines to basketball court for $7,600 but no basketball court there.”

Cox also read an invoice from a company called Dustbin Divers for refurbishing, upgrading and servicing of electrical work at the Morvant Community Centre. However, Cox said, the Morvant Community Centre had not been built yet.

“They did upgrading and servicing, refurbishing, $75,790 every month—and I have no Morvant Community Centre. As a matter of fact, we have been waiting 22 years and it has just started to build. It is not a mistake. It is fraud.”

« Last Edit: September 15, 2014, 05:13:39 AM by Flex »

 

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