By Neto Baptiste
Staff within the Ministry of Sports continue to function despite the absence of key utilities to aid them in their day-to-day duties.
This is according to Director of Sports and former national sprinter, Heather Daley, who said the department is still awaiting the connection of phone lines and internet, tools critical for the effective functioning of the office following a move to their new location in the building formerly occupied by Cricket West Indies (CWI) in St John’s.
“Our staff still functions the best way they can where they still come to sign in and they are now reporting to schools, and so our staff has been dealing with it as best as they can. Obviously, my telephone is being used primarily as the office number, so I accept calls at all hours. I try to do the best that I can and then reach out to the coaches to reach out to the schools that request their presence in terms of anything,” she said.
Daley revealed also that several attempts to have the process expedited though the relevant departments have not yielded results but hopes the issues are rectified in short order.
“We have made several attempts to call the people at APUA and we have also reached out to the people at IT and they have sent their technicians to look at the facility in terms of internet. But obviously they are also saying that they have to go through a tendering process to ascertain which vendor will get the job and that has not been done as yet,” she said.
“In terms of the telephones, I really can’t tell you what is going on with that. We have reached out to persons inside and we have reached out to all and sundry that we could think of and not up to now we have gotten anybody from APUA to come in and do an assessment of what is needed,” the official added.
The department made the move to the new location just behind of the High Court building off Factory Road around late April to early May this year.
The sports director said Minister of Sports Daryll Matthew has been briefed on the situation.
“He has been informed of the situation and he is well aware. I think the last discussion we had was he was going to make representation to the minister in Cabinet, so I will allow him to do that — if it wasn’t done since last week — and see what happens in the next couple of weeks,” Daley said.
Reports are that for some time following the move, staff have been working shortened hours from 8am to 12pm daily since the sports department was relocated from the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium.