Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport Gail Teixeira has come out swinging in response to accusations of foot dragging by her ministry to commit itself to provide land to construct the Guyana Football Federation's training centre.

In an exclusive interview with Stabroek Sport the Minister declared that the Guyana Football Federation is attempting to find a scapegoat for another football issue which mirrors last year's stadium fiasco. The minister stopped short of accusing the GFF of hoodwinking the public but claimed that the football organisation is attempting to take everyone for another ride reminiscent of last September.

"I nor the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport will not be made a scapegoat. It is for the public to be rational and to know that once again that the GFF is being less than honest in dealing with the public or the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport," the minister said.

"The Government is prepared in principle to make land available to the GFF for the purpose of a training centre but we must have suggestions or a proposal from the GFF of which sites they are interested in. In addition to that, in order to access land we have to be able to put up a proposal that identifies what the land will be used for. This is not unusual. The GFF is not being asked to do anything unusual."

"The GFF is being asked to put up a specific project proposal that will state what is the land being used for, if it is training centre or training centre/stadium, where is the money coming from, what is the anticipated support from FIFA, and also where is the rest of the money coming from. We are asking this because we do not want to have a repeat performance of the football stadium (issue)," the minister said.

"We have asked for that and all we have received is architectural drawings for a training centre/stadium." Teixeira said, adding that although there was information stating that US$400,000 would be provided by the Goal Project, there was a promise of a further US$600,000.

"There is no clear source of who, and how and when it ($600,000) will be provided to the GFF."

The minister added that the drawings supplied to her by the GFF referred to land at the University of Guyana estate. But she pointed out that U.G. had asked the GFF that a new proposal must be submitted if their land should be considered for use to construct a training centre/stadium and not a stadium as was on the previous proposal.

The minister also questioned the validity of the January 25 deadline put down by FIFA Regional Development Officer Keith Look Loy

Teixeira said that as far as she understands December 31 was the deadline for submissions for the Goal Project. Look Loy had indicated that he had given the GFF a January 25 deadline as he had to submit the proposal to FIFA by January 31.

"The GFF has to state to us in writing what is the deadline for the Goal Project. They have obviously missed the December 31 deadline, there was no deadline for January (at least not one we were aware of) and if they (GFF) are going to make the FIFA deadline of June then they have got to tell us the deadline that we have to make," the minister said.

"To attempt now to make it look like as if it is the ministry that is holding up GFF's Goal Project is extremely unfair and dishonest. "The deadline for the Goal Project was December 31 which the GFF missed. The new deadlines for submissions are February, June and October and in each case the proposal has to be two months in advance. The GFF has not done their work. They have not been on the ball. The are now trying to find someone to blame for their inactivity. The Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport is not taking the blame, not this time," Teixeira declared.

The Minister claimed that after the stadium fiasco she was forced to discard her kiddies glove when dealing with issues of football and don "boxing gloves."

"I believe that it is time that while I have tried to deal with a number of the issues cautiously and diplomatically it is time to tell the Guyanese public that we are being taken for a ride once again. This time I'm not part of the ride," stressed Teixeira. Questioned on the statements made by the Minister, general secretary of the GFF George Rutherford was emphatic that the Guyana Goal Project is to be submitted in February 2002 to FIFA Development Officer Keith Look Loy for consideration, and approval by the Goal Project approval committee in March 2002. Rutherford pointed out that while the approval committee would have preferred to have received confirmation that suitable land was donated to the GFF to house the project, it would be prepared to accept a statement from the government of Guyana that it will donate suitable land even if such a donation is qualified by a statement that Government would be satisfied with the project.

Rutherford claimed that after approval of the project in March 2002, of which US$400,000 have been allocated for the first phase and subject to the GFF's utilisation of this sum of money within one year, it will become eligible for phase two of the project that will cost $US600,000.

To ensure that all of the US$400,000 is spent within one year, Rutherford said that the GFF has mobilised an architect/project consultant as well as geo technical, structural, quantity surveying and electrical/plumbing engineering consultants. These persons have begun preliminary work on the project but are hampered by their inability to identify the actual site for the construction, the general secretary claimed. "The FIFA approval process in March requires inter alia submissions of preliminary drawings of the project, estimates of costs for construction and labour, annual maintenance and equipping the facility. This document has been forwarded to Look Loy and we trust that a copy would satisfy the Minister's concerns in the interim," the general secretary stated.

Rutherford added that the GFF is currently having discussions with officers of the Lands and Surveys department of the Ministry of Agriculture and are looking at the possible sites for recommendation to the minister.

"We trust that the government's approval process will be swift so that at the FIFA Congress in May 2002 it can be reported that Guyana is among the countries whose Goal Project is approved and that work has commenced."