By Neto Baptiste
The dumping of records that were being housed at the old community Sports & Games office at the YMCA Sports Complex could not be avoided.
This is according to the Director of Sports, Heather Samuel Daley, who said the documents were thrown out only after it was well established that they could not be salvaged.
“Persons have been breaking into the YMCA and the records were housed there in a filing cabinet and persons broke into the building and scatted the documents all over the place. On several occasions we have packed them up and put them back where they were supposed to be and after the most recent break-in the records got wet as well. I was told there were termites were also on the records [and] they could not be salvaged and the decision was made to discard them,” she said.
The issue was raised by former West Indies fast bowler Kenneth Benjamin on Thursday who, while speaking on the Good Morning Jojo sports show, revealed that the records had been taken to the Cooks Dump.
Reports are that the discarded documents contained team sheets and match results covering all schools and community sports from 2000 going as far back as 1970.
Daley said measures will be put in place to avoid a similar situation.
“Well, it’s to ensure we have adequate spacing for our records. It’s not something we can take lightly in terms of records for persons who may want to know how they performed during the era as well as trying to get them to the museum as early as possible so that we can avoid the situation,” the director said.
The building at the YMCA Sports Complex has been vacant since 1998.
Maybe a lock on the filing cabinet would be a good start….