SVGFF’s offices burglarised and vandalised

The St Vincent and the Grenadines Football Federation (SVGFF) is counting its losses, after a break in at its administrative building, located at the corner of Higginson and Grenville Street in capital, Kingstown, sometime between last Thursday and Friday.

Losses which include mainly theft of some of the organisation’s InformationTechnology equipment, may run into thousands of dollars, according to the SVGFF’s First Vice- President, Otashie Spring.

Spring, who is temporarily heading the organisation in the absence of president Carl Dickson, said that the offices of the president, the General Secretary, Executive Administrative and the Accounts Department, were burglarised and vandalised.

Spring related that important security and information storage equipment were taken, while filing cabinets and drawers were ransacked,and entry doors and locks tampered with.

“A number of stuff would have been stolen, a couple thousand dollars in value … Items which are of an IT nature”, Spring disclosed.

However, Spring said that his intuition tells him that the guilty person or persons, knew what they were about, stating that there were more “valuable” items which were not stolen.

“To me, it was an information gathering exercise”, Spring opined.

Bemoaning the incident, Spring said, “It is a happening that is very, very sad, as it concerns our footballing journey and where we at in our football development that we have to basically sustain and endure something like this”.

Despite the losses, Spring underscored the organisation’s commitment towards developing the sport, and noted that the Executive is already embarking on revamping the surveillance and security operations of the building.

Determined to fill all security gaps of the building, Spring projected: “We are working on making the people’s office more secured and information as well “.

The Acting President said that the matter of the burglary and vandalizing of the building is in the hands of the police.

The SVGFF’s administrative building was bought four years ago,costing in excess of EC$ 2 million, with funding from the sport’s world governing body – FIFA.