Trinidad newspaper investigating claims journalist benefitted from LifeSport programme contracts
From Caribbean360
PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad, Monday July 7, 2014, CMC – The Newsday newspaper Monday said it had launched an investigation into reports that one of its journalists had benefitted from contracts under the controversial LifeSport programme.
“Newsday has taken note of a story in …the Express newspaper in which one of our staff members is reported to have benefitted from a contract under the Life Sport programme.
“To the extent that this constitutes a serious conflict of interest, Newsday has begun its own inquiries into the matter,” the paper’s editor in chief, Jones P Madeira said in a statement.
The Sunday Express said that the journalist, through his company, had received a contract from the LifeSport programme.
The paper said the journalist had written stories about the death threat on the life of Ruth Marchan, the deputy director of Physical Education and Sport at the Ministry of Sport and the corruption she exposed about how TT$34 million (One TT dollar =US$0.16 cents) was paid from LifeSport funds Maths and English lessons to a well known educator, but no work was done.
The coalition People’s Partnership government has initiated an audit into the controversial programme in which millions of dollars have been spent to get young people to turn away from a life of crime and be involved in social work and other programmes.
Prime Minister Kamla Persad Bissessar has removed the programme from under the portfolio of Sports Minister Anil Roberts and placed it under the Ministry of National Security.
The Minister of National Security Gary Griffith has said that the contracts awarded under the programme were the key to unraveling how millions of tax payers’ dollars were spent.
Giving one person tens of thousands of dollars in a brown paper bag with claims of handing it over to invisible participants because they have no bank account has to be a sick joke.
“If that is not a sign of financial mismanagement, questionable activity and incompetence, then I don’t know what is,” Griffith told the Sunday Express newspaper.
Madeira said Newsday remains confident that its approaches to related stories it has published on the Life Sport issues have not been compromised, “and assures its readers that the newspaper remains committed to the highest journalistic principles in the conduct of its editorial affairs”.
