Letter to the Sports Editor...Conveniently Stephney avoids the major issues in the Bill

Letter to the Sports Editor…Conveniently Stephney avoids the major issues in the Bill

Sep 01, 2013 Sports

Dear Editor,
I read with agony Mr. Stephney’s feeble attempt to discredit Mr. Bacchus on his position with the ill-fated Cricket Bill. Even though he claimed to have read the Bill, he obviously does not understand its implications. I do respect Mr. Stephney as a cricketer and his views sometimes are not as jaundiced and caustic as the ones contained in this letter which literally attempts to unjustly blast Mr. Bacchus to pieces. In such circumstances, I am compelled to throw in my 2 cents. I did notice in the comments section in SN that a blogger did respond pertinently to Elroy about Governments involvement in Sports.
Regarding his first and second points, this Bill seeks to empower the Minister to execute certain functions regarding the administration of cricket in Guyana. That in itself runs counter to the position of the ICC and its members with the intervention of politics into the game of cricket. That should not happen and his further suggestion that the Minister has consultative positions with the WICB on 2 actions does not make the political involvement of the Sports Minister legal and proper. All international sporting entities specifically ban the involvement of politicians in the respective sports and this Bill is reflective of the Government’s attitude to international rules and regulations governing such organizations. Has Mr. Stephney ever scrutinized the way the GOG consults and what the word consult means or connotes? Elroy, pay attention!
Mr. Stephney should be aware that the GCB did not remove Mr. King from his job but Mr. Reon King abandoned his job and aligned himself with the IMC and may have even been paid by the Sports Ministry and the IMC, but it now seems that Mr. King has been abandoned by them both and now seems to be unemployed. The GCB holds no grudges against Mr. King judging from the fact that they have just appointed him to attend a WICB sponsored coaching programme to be held in Jamaica.
Quite possibly, no other sporting organization or for that matter any private or government entity in the entire world has had to withstand as much financial and forensic scrutiny as the GCB has done in the past 3 years and has passed all with flying colours: The GCB’s financial statements are audited annually by a professional auditing Firm for over 20 years now and has continued to be done so every year; in 2011, Design & Consultants Engineering Services, appointed by the Sports Minister and invoiced to the GCB, completed a forensic financial audit of the 2 hostels built by GCB’s own funds; in 2011 again, the Registrar of the Friendly Societies appointed Mr. Rupert Foster to conduct a thorough investigation of the entire operations of the GCB, this report which essentially cleared the GCB has never been released by the then Friendly Societies Minister Manzoor Nadir.
Another official from the Friendly Societies, whose name I cannot remember, also conducted a financial investigation of the GCB but could find nothing. Four audits in less than 4 months, Whew! Of note is that the Government has never given a blind cent to any of the cricket Boards and now wants to control the Board on how its monies should be spent. Financial irregularity is usually the easiest accusation to make against anyone and sell to the gullible public, but the hardest to have dispelled and persons should be cautious when casting such aspersions without any evidence to back up their claims.
Mr. Stephney’s colleagues in the IMC with whom he sat literally, thrashed the accounts of the DCB in 2010 to the tune of $800,000 resulting in the auditor of the DCB at the time, another member of the infamous IMC, to issue a qualified opinion against those accounts in 2011. How can Mr. Stephney reconcile himself sitting with such unprincipled, dishonest and disgruntled persons? Mr. Stephney studiously avoided making any comments about the $400,000 from the Essequibo Board funds that were misused and abused by the IMC and his friends during their several time wasting IMC soirees and could not play a youth cricket tournament.
Mr. Stephney is knowledgeable enough to know that you do not need to hold a bat to be able to administer cricket and he should not allow himself to be brainwashed by an unashamed group of disgruntled persons. Whenever someone tells you something you should always take it with a grain of salt and use your intelligence to assimilate the information received after analyzing the motivations of each person.
Intikab Sankar

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Letter to the Sports Editor…Conveniently Stephney avoids the major issues in the Bill

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