The Ministry of Youth Sport and Community Empowerment dispensed $1.7 million in support of the Prime Minister’s Cup football tournament last year.
Minister in the Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs Ryan Straughn made this revelation during continuing debate on the 2024-2025 Estimates recently in the House of Assembly.
He said the initiative, which he hoped would be a yearly event, provided financial support for footballers.
“These events were specifically intended to ensure the reconnection within our community and certainly the culmination on Independence night. I think all of Barbados can be proud as to not just that the Cup itself was executed well, but it did provide an opportunity for us to be able to assess the talent that exists
across communities and the ability to mix different levels of clubs.
“Each player was given a stipend for each game. There were a number of supporting activities around training in soft skills as well as other training opportunities that were provided throughout the execution of this particular tournament, such that we hope going forward that this now becomes a model for how we can change potentially the trajectory for persons in this particular space.”
Straughn also sought $144 460 for Parliament’s hosting of a major event with Barbados having assumed the chairmanship of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association.
In respect of the Prime Minister’s Office’s getting $70 million, Minister of Planning and Development, Dr William Duguid broke it down into three parts with the smallest amount going towards salaries and personal emoluments.
“As per our convention we don’t really debate personal emoluments here. The second part has to do with the digitisation centre. It became so obviously important why digitisation of all of our records is essential because it gives us an opportunity to store them and store the especially historic records in multiple places.
“We remember when we had that fire at the Archives and several documents were destroyed and if we had only been able to digitise even before that we would have had at least copies of those documents.
“So the second part of this money is to be able to pay and accelerate the digitisation programme and the operations of digitisation and the final part, the larger sum, is for the Geriatric Hospital which is on target to be completed this year,” he said.
