Tuesday, November 10 2009

THE BACKLASH against the Ministry of Sport expenditure of $2 million for a giant national flag at the Hasely Crawford Stadium in Port-of-Spain continued over the weekend with a special group on the online social networking site Facebook being formed to protest it.

On Saturday, the Facebook group ‘2 million against $2 million flag!!!’ was formed in response to reports of claims that persons on Facebook were in support of the flag.

A heading describing the group’s purpose reads: “Quite frankly a waste of money and does nothing for my national pride. Let’s show Mr Hunt exactly how many people on Facebook are against this waste of tax payers’ money since he seems very convinced there’s a lot of support for this madness on Facebook!!! Trinis abroad, Trinis here, even non-Trinis — for those who realise this is absolute nonsense and a complete WASTE, please join!”

By yesterday at 3.30 pm, the group had 1,812 members. Another group, called, ‘I do not support that $2 million flag...waste of money and crazy budget!!!’ has also been formed and had 219 members.

Last week, Sports Minister Gary Hunt argued that the flag has huge support online. On his own Facebook profile he said the cost of the flag was $15,800, but did not specify whether this figure was for the flag fabric alone or also engineering works for the flagpole. He later explained that the figure he quoted was for fabric alone, after confirming the $2 million overall price tag.