Bissoondyal Singh is still president of DCB because of court order

Dec 17, 2009 Sports

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Dear Editor,
I refer to a letter written by Mr. Raymond Barton and published in the Friday 12th December 2009 edition of Kaieteur newspaper.
I would assume that this is the same Raymond Barton that is vice president of East Coast Cricket Board and “manager” of the Demerara Senior cricket team that was outplayed by a reserve squad and trashed by the Berbicians.
In that letter he referred to a reporter as absent minded and proceeded to apparently make a case for his East Coast president to remain in office at the Demerara Cricket Board even though the three (3) other associations namely, the Georgetown Cricket Association, East Bank Cricket Association and West Demerara Cricket Association wants him to demit office and submitted a motion at the last OGM calling for the “immediate replacement of the entire DCB Executive”.
Mr. Barton conveniently failed to inform the public that Mr. Bissoondyal Singh took his fellow Executives to court while purportedly acting on behalf of the Demerara Cricket Board.
If anyone was absent-minded it should be Mr. Barton since, in public view, at the commencement of the said OGM a court marshal served an order on current DCB Executives stopping them from reading of a motion which was submitted three (3) weeks before, as is constitutionally required.
These were the same Executives that had to sit with Mr. Bissoondyal Singh at the head table, they all refused.
The grounds for granting of the court order by Justice Franklyn Holder is that the motion should not be carried since DCB Annual General Meeting is due in January 2010 and new officers would be elected to serve.
Anything contrary to the constitution submitted to Justice Franklyn Holder, as stated in Mr. Barton’s letter, can be classified as material non- disclosure to the Judge at the time of granting of the court order.
Mr. Mentore’s question about the substantial amount spent on cricket balls has merit since the DCB only plays inter association cricket and when teams participate in GCB cricket the balls are usually provided by the Guyana Cricket Board, as explained by Competitions Chairman Krishna Mangal.
I can personally attest to the fact that Mr. Bissoondyal Singh has been using the DCB funds to pay for cricket balls and personally distributing same to campaign for votes. He personally gave two (2) boxes of balls to me and charged it to the DCB ball account at Guyana Cricket Board.
Mentore’s question about the Hand-in-Hand prize money was also quite valid since up to the time of penning this letter Mr. Bissoondyal Singh has not submitted a report on the large amount of money the DCB garnered from a massive turn out for the Finals (under lights) at Lusignan.
It is apparent that Mr. Bissoondyal Singh and treasurer Mr. Pretipaul Jaigobin has total control of DCB’S funds and is spending it as though it is their personal money.
Another of Mr. Barton’s uninformed statements is that Mr. Robert Adonis is an Executive member. According to the DCB constitution the Chairmen of Selectors are not Executive members, hence, Mr. Adonis should not have been at the head table.
Also Mr. Barton did not state that the Secretary, Mr. Rajendra Singh and Seven (7) other Executives have signed a letter denouncing President, Bissoondyal Singh’s court action (there are II executive members).
We are now hearing that the East Coast fielded 41 Teams in this year’s Hand-in-Hand tournament and it is apparent that Mr. Singh is trying to increase his clubs to get more delegates (at the last OGM one of his delegates was an eight (8) year old kid) However, in conversation with Mr. Sheik Mohammed, I was told that the East Coast Board split Enterprise Cricket Club into three (3) teams for the Hand-in-Hand Competition. Demerara Cricket Board’s Chairman of Competitions, Mr. Krishna Mangal, has been complaining that during this tournament he visited many grounds, on the East Coast, after seeing their fixtures in the newspapers, only to find softball cricket in action.
I can assure the cricketing public that the East Bank Cricket Association would join with Georgetown and West Demerara to propose constitutional changes at our AGM in January 2010 and to work with the newly elected executives so that cricket can be played on the field and not in the Law Courts.
I appeal to the Guyana Cricket Board to cease any further disbursement of funds to the DCB until all of these matters are resolved.
I would also like to state that for the past two months the DCB did not have an Executive meeting due to the lack of quorum.
The continued presence of Bissoondyal Singh at the helm of Demerara Cricket may be the catalyst for its complete destruction.
Rohan Sarjoo

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