The former BLB official also called for sponsors’ money to be added to stakes.

“There continues to be a decline in the horse population, the reduction of racing days, the non-payment of subscriptions, the sponsors contributions and the owners contributions, amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars each year, without the presentation of annual audited accounts,” Samlalsingh had told the meeting.

“Where are all these large sums of money going?” he asked.

The BLB was forced to take over payment of stakes to owners earlier this year because the ARC was taking too long to pay winning prizes -- sometimes up to three months after the results of dope tests.

In a response to Samlalsingh’s concerns, a racing official blamed him as be-ing partly responsible for the present state of the rac-ing industry.

He said when Samlalsingh was chairman of the BLB under the National Alliance for Reconstruction Government he had the opportunity to have racing centralised at Caroni instead of Arima.

The official noted that the infrastructure was already there with all the building materials to be used to continue construction.

The Caroni Racing Complex was the brainchild of the late John O’Halloran, a senior government minister in the Dr. Eric Williams government.

A sum of $120 million was approved for the Caroni Racing Complex but the plan was scrapped by the late Prime Minister George Chambers after Dr. Williams died.

Many were calling for “houses before horses”.

“Samlalsingh was the first BLB chairman and he could have influenced the government to go ahead with Caroni Complex,” he said.

“Today racing would have been centralised at Caroni and most of the problems would have been solved,” he added.