WIPA: WICB Never Mentioned US$90,000

The West Indies Players Association (WIPA) has denied a claim that the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) indicated it was willing to pay the players between US$80,000 to US$90,000 as tour guarantee for the Sri Lankan series.

On Thursday night, the WICB issued a press release stating that it has sent a signed copy of the Collective Labour Agreement to the West Indies Players Association President and Chief Executive Officer Dinanath Ramnarine.

Accompanying the signed copy of the CLA, was a letter from the CEO of the WICB, Roger Brathwaite, which said that in a letter to Ramnarine on May 5, 2005, the board had proposed that the parties sign the CLA since the negotiations on that document had already been completed.

The WICB?s letter of July 18, which was in response to a letter from WIPA dated July 6, reiterated the board?s position on the way forward to resolve the differences between the two organisations.

The release sent out by WICB communications manager Leonard Robertson stated:

?In keeping with our proposal, Clause 5 and the issue of whether the Individual Sponsorship Agreements are compliant with Clause 1k of the Match/Tour contract, should be referred to Justice Saunders immediately.

?To that end, we have forwarded a copy of Clause 5 to Justice Saunders. All other issues, except the disclosure of the Digicel agreement and related issues, should be referred to mediation.?

WIPA confirmed it had received the board?s letter and would be signing the CLA as soon as possible.

Brathwaite said that WIPA having rejected the board?s proposals during the talks with Mr Justice Saunders on June 17, brought back the very same proposals to the discussions on June 29, together with a financial proposal of US $125,000, which the board could not accept.

?I suggested to you that a proposal in the region of US$80,000-90,000 might be a figure that the board would give some consideration to ,but this was rejected out of hand,? Brathwaite pointed out.

However, WIPA said that this figure of US$80,000 to US$90,000 was never offered for discussion by the board.

?The board in no correspondence to WIPA indicated that it was willing to move from the $50,000 offer.

?In an e-mail received at 7.39pm on June 29, the board stated that it was going to select another team because the players didn?t sign and told us that our proposal was too high. They never said they were willing to look at US$80,000 to US$90,000.

?There seems to be a lot of (unheard of) things being told at this time but the truth will always prevail.?