NUKU‘ALOFA – The Tonga Amateur Sports Association and National Olympic Committee says claims the organisation is broke and dysfunctional are “all a misunderstanding”.

Tonga’s Prime Minister, ‘Akilisi Pohiva, told parliament last week the government had lost faith in the operations of TASANOC, because it had no money and was unable to function properly.

He said the organisation couldn’t even pay its power bill.

But Tonga and Oceania’s Olympic Committees say that’s not the case.

The prime minister claimed TASANOC was unable to pay its electricity and water bills, staff salaries or any of its debts.

The president of Tonga’s Amateur Sports Association, Lady Robyn Tu‘ivakano, acknowledged the organisation went into overdraft after the Oceania National Olympic Committee withheld financial support last year.

“We have had problems in updating our reports, which we have now done.

“We asked government for assistance – we had proposed three months ahead the amount from government to help us because at the time we had been blocked from ONOC, our funds coming in, so they gave it in five sums, so yes they did know that we had no money.” Lady Tu‘ivakano said.

The President of the Oceania National Olympic Committee, Robin Mitchell, said funding from the IOC has been suspended since the middle of last year however regional funding was recently resumed.

“After our first visit we started sending through some money from our Guam office – continental funds that are managed by the ONOC office,” Mitchell said.

“Funding from IOC won’t been resumed until the draft constitution gets through IOC some time this week.”

Mitchell and ONOC Secretary General Ricardo Blas attended last week’s extraordinary general meeting in Nuku‘alofa, where amendments were made to update the constitution, and are confident TASANOC is now on target.

“The red flags come up in Tonga’s instance because one of the programmes they hadn’t reported on was as far back as 2012.

“When we were there earlier in the week all except one were completed and they would send a copy of that to the IOC in Switzerland and one to ONOC’s office in Suva, and once Switzerland clears it the World Funding programme is turned on again.”

Lady Tu‘ivakano says they have one week to meet the IOC’s demands.

“We’ve got a timeline and by the 15th we have to upgrade, revise our constitution and that’s it.

“We’ve got our first draft, we just have to consolidate and send it back to IOC for approval and we’ve got our AGM lined up for March and we will adopt the constitution and that’s it.”

If Tonga does not meet the February 15 deadline the Kingdom would not be able to go to the Rio Olympics and athletes would have to compete under the Olympic flag.

ONOC said it is in almost daily contact with Switzerland.

It added that Tonga’s issues with funding for the 2019 Pacific Games is an internal matter and not to do with ONOC or the IOC.

- Dateline Pacific