No joy ride in Tobago

The Minister visited Tobago for the annual 2016 Tobago House of Assembly Sports Award at Magdalena where he and nine others were formally invited to attend the ceremony held at the resort last Friday evening.

The blog posted yesterday afternoon contained photos of the total bill which included breakfast, lunch and dinner buffet, 11 Single/Double Occupancy rooms and a Deluxe King room. There was also another bill of TT $10, 400 for the rental of four vehicles from Rollock’s Car Rentals between the period May 19-22. Included with this, was a list of nine names all of whom were invited to the event, with a request for accommodation for three additional people made by the Minister.

When contacted the Sports Minister said, “it was not a joy ride it was work, we went to the event we celebrated with the athletes. I met with Mr (Jomo) Pitt (THA Secretary of Sport and Youth Affairs), we did the tour, I met with the youth league, we went to the (Sea to Sea) marathon. This is a non-issue, people just trying to cause mischief as always. We don’t go to Tobago at all, it’s like disrespect to Tobago. Tobago is just like south (Trinidad), Penal, like Princes Town like everywhere else but it will obviously have cost to go to Tobago.

“We tried to kill two birds with one stone so we made a trip out of it. We are now finalising some plans to do some renovations on the Dwight Yorke Stadium along with some other of the stadiums. We took this opportunity for the first time to go to the Dwight Yorke Stadium to meet Assemblyman Jomo Pitt.

“We also met with the Youth Council of Tobago and there was a marathon (Sea to Sea) over there as well where we were invited to attend and discuss some other things. I left for there on Saturday, went straight to the hotel where the event was also held, attended the function (THA Sports Awards) met with Mr Pitt on the Sunday and was back in the office on Monday.” He added, “As a Minister, my personal assistant rolls with me so I requested her, Cindy Cupid, to attend the event with me. There was another invited individual who usually goes with her assistant and of course a communications person. I was told those three were invited so they dealt with the invited people and I would have spoken to the PS (Permanent Secretary) with regards to my personal assistant.” He explained the decision to stay the additional two days will profit the island’s sports division and will contribute towards a new youth and sports policy currently being created by the Ministry.

“To cut cost we actually try to do as much as possible because we don’t know when again we will be going to Tobago. We work very closely with the athletes and the infrastructural aspect of Tobago. People just trying to cause mischief and politicise, similar to the Brian Lara Stadium with the people stuffing of jersey in the pipes to make an issue.” He said the Ministry of Sport in Trinidad and Tobago is now “recovering” from previous decisions of the former People’s Partnership administration.

“Remember where sports came from. Life Sport was $400 million and we can’t account for it...Right now for certain people, sports is boring. We are cleaning up inside the Ministry and a lot of people who were apart of those incidents are still in the Ministry and are not happy. We are implementing certain procedures to prevent these things from happening again,” he said