Two amend­ments to the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) con­sti­tu­tion were made to en­hance the ef­fi­cien­cy of the dai­ly man­age­ment of the sport in T&T, ac­cord­ing to third vice-pres­i­dent Os­mond Down­er Sun­day.

​The amend­ments aimed to place greater ac­count­abil­i­ty on ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers to at­tend meet­ings where key de­ci­sions are made.

​The changes were ap­proved at the TTFA’s An­nu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing (AGM) yes­ter­day, held at the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT) Cam­pus in Point Lisas. Fol­low­ing the ap­proval of a lengthy agen­da, which in­clud­ed the ac­tiv­i­ty re­port for the last Con­gress, the pre­sen­ta­tion of the bal­ance sheet, high­light­ing prof­it and loss state­ments, the in­de­pen­dent ex­ter­nal au­di­tor’s re­port, the ap­proval of the au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ment, and the ap­proval of the bud­get, Down­er pro­posed the amend­ments, stress­ing that the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the sport’s gov­er­nance is crit­i­cal.

As such, Ar­ti­cle 37.9 was amend­ed to read as fol­lows: “Any po­si­tion with­in the Ex­ec­u­tive Com­mit­tee (Ex­Co) shall be con­sid­ered va­cant in case of death, res­ig­na­tion or if a mem­ber of the Ex­ec­u­tive Com­mit­tee, by a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty vote of the oth­er mem­bers of the Ex­ec­u­tive Com­mit­tee, does not par­tic­i­pate in four con­sec­u­tive meet­ings of the Ex­ec­u­tive Com­mit­tee.”

Rea­son: Reg­u­lar at­ten­dance at Ex­ec­u­tive Com­mit­tee meet­ings by all mem­bers is es­sen­tial for the ef­fi­cient func­tion­ing of the Com­mit­tee.

Ar­ti­cle 31.1 was al­so changed to read as fol­lows: “The Or­di­nary Con­gress shall be held every year in the month of Sep­tem­ber. If it is not pos­si­ble to hold the Con­gress in Sep­tem­ber, the date of the Con­gress shall be de­cid­ed by the Ex­ec­u­tive Com­mit­tee, to be held on a date no lat­er than the 30th of No­vem­ber of the said year.”

Rea­son: En­sures the Ex­Co con­venes the An­nu­al Or­di­nary Con­gress with­out lengthy de­lib­er­ate de­lay.

​Ac­cord­ing to Down­er, the changes are “to be more ef­fi­cient.” He elab­o­rat­ed: “For ex­am­ple, the present statute says noth­ing about ab­sen­teeism. It just said in case the place be­comes va­cant if death, etc, I added on the part with the ab­sen­teeism, be­cause you can­not have an ex­ec­u­tive when you have peo­ple ab­sent. I got that from dif­fer­ent many oth­er statutes. Ab­sen­teeism is not some­thing to be en­cour­aged at all in an ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee which has im­por­tant things; some­body ab­sent for con­sec­u­tive meet­ings, etc. So, they have to be in­ves­ti­gat­ed, and that is what that says, and their place can be de­clared va­cant.”

Quizzed on whether the TTFA made a prof­it or loss, as well as oth­er de­tails of the au­dit­ed state­ments, Down­er said all oth­er is­sues per­tain­ing to the meet­ing are to be an­swered by its pres­i­dent, Kieron Ed­wards, who could not be reached yes­ter­day.

The as­so­ci­a­tion’s vice-pres­i­dent, Col­in Mur­ray, al­so ex­plained that ex­pec­ta­tions of the meet­ing deal­ing with the ap­point­ment of a new coach or whether se­nior men’s coach Dwight Yorke was to be re­tained as na­tion­al coach in the wake of the coun­try’s fail­ure to qual­i­fy for the World Cup next year, were not ad­dressed. He con­firmed al­so that there was no men­tion of who was go­ing to be a re­place­ment for sacked tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor, An­ton Corneal.