Wallace: Home of Football not yet fit for operation

“There are two things. There is no Fire Ser­vice ap­provals and of course if it’s a place for the pub­lic you need li­a­bil­i­ty in­sur­ance, which you get when the build­ing is com­plet­ed. The build­ing is not com­plet­ed, there are still things to be done,” Wal­lace told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day in jus­ti­fy­ing the tem­po­rary clo­sure of the fa­cil­i­ty be­cause is not yet com­plete.

This rev­e­la­tion comes just eight days af­ter for­mer pres­i­dent David John-Williams host­ed an event to de­clare the 72-room ho­tel and oth­er aux­il­iary fa­cil­i­ties at the Bal­main, Cou­va lo­ca­tion open.

The tour of the Home of Foot­ball was at­tend­ed by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, FI­FA pres­i­dent Gi­an­ni In­fan­ti­no, CON­CA­CAF pres­i­dent Vic­tor Mon­tagliani, Sports and Youth Af­fairs Min­is­ter Shamafa Cud­joe and sev­er­al oth­er high pro­file guests.

“It’s a tem­po­rary clo­sure and we want to open it as soon as pos­si­ble. On Thurs­day (to­mor­row), I would do a walk through with the con­trac­tor to see what are the things out­stand­ing to be done and dis­cuss this whole is­sue of com­ple­tion and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion from fire and so on. In the mean­time, you are deal­ing with li­a­bil­i­ty and if peo­ple are there and some­thing should hap­pen then we would have ques­tions to an­swer.”

Clos­ing the Home of Foot­ball was just one of sev­er­al crit­i­cal de­ci­sions tak­en by the new TTFA ex­ec­u­tive on Mon­day, a day af­ter Wal­lace and his slate of vice-pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates, Clynt Tay­lor (1st vice pres­i­dent), Su­san Joseph-War­rick (2nd vice pres­i­dent) and Sam Phillip (3rd vice pres­i­dent), suc­cess­ful­ly oust­ed then in­cum­bent David John-Williams and his “Team Im­pactors” slate.

The ex­ec­u­tive al­so an­nounced a de­ci­sion to “stop trans­ac­tions on all TTFA bank ac­counts, in­clud­ing on­line trans­ac­tions.” But Wal­lace yes­ter­day told Guardian Me­dia Sports that there are in fact mea­sures in place to main­tain nor­mal op­er­a­tions of the as­so­ci­a­tion while an of­fi­cial change-over is be­ing com­plet­ed.

“What we are do­ing is wait­ing for our sig­na­to­ries and things to change. The pa­per­work for that has al­ready start­ed and we would make the nec­es­sary ad­just­ment in terms of staff pay­ments and so on for those things to hap­pen. We have some tem­po­rary arrange­ments in place for us to func­tion and op­er­ate,” Wal­lace clar­i­fied.

RELATED NEWS

Home of Football shut down, transactions halted.
By Narissa Fraser (Newsday).

ONE week after the opening of the Home of Football in Balmain, Couva, newly-elected TT Football Association (TTFA) president William Wallace says the facility is being shut down until further notice.

Wallace dethroned David John-Williams as president at the association’s elections on Sunday. Clynt Taylor, Susan Joseph-Warrick and Sam Phillip were voted first, second and third vice-presidents, respectively.

Speaking with Newsday on Tuesday morning, the TTFA boss said the decision was made on Monday during approximately eight hours of meetings with his vice-presidents. He said there are pending approvals and no property insurance for the million-dollar facility.

“We found out some of the approvals are not in place. For example, fire approvals. You can’t have people in a building without fire approval.”

According to the official website of the Ministry of Rural Development, applications for over ten lots of land must receive approval from the chief designs engineer of the Ministry of Works and Transport, the Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA), the TT Electricity Commission (TTEC) and the chief fire officer.

While this is the main issue with the facility his administration has found thus far, Wallace said, “That was enough for us to say people can’t occupy the building. Information is still coming in on the Home and other things.”

In a press release issued by TTFA’s communications department, decisions made on Monday included the creation of an advisory committee and assigning roles to the vice-presidents. Taylor will focus on membership affairs, Joseph-Warrick will tackle women’s football and Phillip will handle security.

Other decisions included: Stopping transactions on all TTFA bank accounts (including online transactions), initiating a financial audit, issuing a public invitation to TTFA creditors to present their claim, and introducing new security measures for the protection of TTFA property.

He said his team will meet again on Wednesday for further discussions.