THE Government gave $17 million to various groups and persons to prepare for the 2012 London Olympic Games, said Sport Minister, Anil Roberts, in the Senate yesterday.
He was responding to questions raised by Opposition Senator Pennelope Beckles.
The Government’s exact allocation for London 2012 was $17,826,872. Of this the TT Olympic Committee got over $2 million, disbursed in two tranches on March 16 and June 25, 2012, said Roberts.
Some $500,000 was allocated for TT’s Olympic athletes to attend a training camp in Wales before the Olympics.
Through the Ministry of Sport, between August 2011 and July 2012, some $7,185,000 was given to 60 elite athletes. Further, some $3,920,358 was awarded to the under-23 football team in trying to qualify for the Olympics. These funds were disbursed on March 1; April 12, 18 and 24; and July 5, 2012.
Some $1,000,575 was spent on sports psychologists services for elite athletes, disbursed on May 27 and June 17, 2011, and on April 15 and August 15, 2012.
He said $1,617,985 was disbursed to experts in the field of sport training, physiology, bio-mechanics, and conditioning, on June 14, 2011.
The Sports Company of TT disbursed funds totalling $942,870 to athletes in several sports to aid their Olympic preparation. These were sailing ($50,000 given on May 12 and $100,000 given on June/July 2012); swimming ($40,000 given on June/July 2012); cycling ($42,095 in February 2012, $50,716 in March 2012 and $182,114 in July 2012); athletics ($33,000 in April 2012, $325,445 in June 2012, $44,500 in June 2012 and $75,000 in July 2012).
Roberts also replied to another listed question by Beckles as to how much was spent on personnel approved by Cabinet to attend the 2012 Olympics.
Roberts said $182,000 was spent on him as Minister; $68,000 on his Ministry’s Permanent Secretary, Ashwin Creed; and $124,000 on the Director of Physical Education and Sport Division, Dave Bobb. In a supplemental query to the first question, Independent Senator Corrine Baptiste-Mc Knight asked if and how this $17 million sum related to an extra $20 million given to the Ministry under the bill to be debated later that sitting (which re-allocates the spending of some $2.9 billion in Budget 2013).
Roberts promised to look into it. He denied Opposition Senator Faris al-Rawi’s query that the $17 million Olympic allocation was an entirely separate sum to the $20 million variation sought in the bill, saying, “So it’s not a total of $37 million”. Saying he’d just used modern technology to get the details, Roberts sought to clear the air on the amount by explaining that the $20 million was the budgetted figure, but of this only $17 million was actually spent.
However Baptiste-Mc Knight disputed this explanation by saying the document accompanying yesterday’s bill said the $20 million was actually transferred to meet payments for the Olympics and not $17 million.
“Your Ministry has serious problems,” she alleged. Later on Finance Minister, Larry Howai, backed Roberts as being correct saying the bill only dealt with transfers of budgetted amounts from one head of expenditure to another, but not the actual expenditures that would have occurred.
By Sean Douglas
Source: www.newsday.co.tt