Investigation ongoing into missing equipment, documents from Cliff Anderson Sports Hall

[www.inewsguyana.com] – Junior Minister of Education with responsibility for Culture, Youth, and Sport, Dr. Nicolette Henry, said that she will be taking a hands-off approach with regard to the investigation into the allegations of equipment and financial documents being removed from the Cliff Anderson Sports Halls. She stated her intention is to allow the relevant authority to take the necessary steps in the investigation.

As it relates to the update on the investigations, she replied that, “I do not think that I should be the one responding to questions of missing equipment, at this point in time, because if an investigation is in process, and I am to speak on that and interfere with the investigation, I do not think that we will have the best outcome.”

“There are persons who are tasked with investigating (the matter) and I want to allow due process to occur … I want those persons to do their jobs without interference, from me as the Minister, so that when I report on the outcome, at the time when the outcome is available, that it reflects a very objective position, at that point in time,” she added.

The Minister did clarify however that an audit was done of assets as they relate to sport equipment and that she had seen the report, which she noted, will be followed up by the relevant persons who are so responsible for doing so.

Minister Henry said that she suspects that the correct mechanism will be implemented so that a track can be made to see where those assets are currently.

“I want to ensure that we take the necessary steps to ensure we can identify where those equipment currently are, and for whatever reason they are not in the system, we are going to attempt to recover them and ensure that they are in the system again, if that is where this is leading to,” she said.

Minister Henry did point out that “we are in the early stages of this investigation, if it were to be called that,”   and so at this point, “we are just ensuring that we can account more or less for the various equipment.”

She said that equipment and financial documents were purported to have been removed from the Cliff Anderson Sports Hall just after the May 11 elections. [Extracted and modified from GINA]