Ernest Hilaire on allocation for St Lucia Zouks: Don’t we have better use for such money?

The St Lucia Zouks, on Friday evening, wrapped up their final home game in this year’s Caribbean Premier League (CPL) tournament. The team now travels to Barbados to take on the Tridents on Sunday. Since the tournament’s inaugural season in 2013, the performance of Saint Lucia’s representative team has been dismal, with their finest outing coming in 2016 when they placed fourth. (For the tournaments held in 2017 and 2018 the team was re-branded as the St Lucia Stars.) 

Recently opposition MP Ernest Hilaire has questioned whether the government’s financial support to the team may not be a waste of taxpayers’ money. Last week he referenced the 2017-2018 allocation of $950,000 for CPL: “Don’t we have better use for such money, especially when that team was playing in Saint Lucia and a previous government had refused to pay it. Why are we paying it? The scarce resources of this country should not be used willy-nilly.” 

Hilaire reminded reporters that he had once served as the CEO of the West Indies Cricket Board, and was a member of the “leading group” that designed the model used for the CPL. He noted that per the 2019-2020 Estimates of Expenditure the amount allocated to CPL had increased.

On Tuesday, Tourism Minister Dominic Fedee told the STAR that the government entered into a three-year arrangement with CPL, valued at US$1.5 million. Fedee said: “What was at stake was Saint Lucia actually losing the team altogether. I have read quite a lot from a few people but we are committed to the development of sports in our country.” 

Moreover: “CPL is making a valid contribution towards the development of tourism in Saint Lucia. Over the years we have seen significant arrival numbers as a result of CPL and we see that when we invest in cricket we get not only television exposure, which is important to a tourism-dependent destination, but as well you also get arrivals.”

Hilaire revealed that CPL had approached the Kenny Anthony government but their request had been “unreasonable”. He argued that the government allocation might have been better spent on developing school sports and on community coaching programmes. He said St. Joseph’s Convent, St. Mary’s College, the Vieux Fort Comprehensive and Leon Hess Secondary School should be “the production house” of sports people on the island.

“The success in sports has to be rooted in our schools’ sports programme and, beyond that, for out-of-school youth we need to have an extensive community-coaching programme. Can you imagine in Saint Lucia that every Saturday you drive by every playing field and you have hundreds of young people playing football, cricket and track and field? Just visualize it. That’s a powerful statement that we can make to this country.”