Pres­i­dent of the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) Bri­an Lewis has ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment af­ter four na­tion­al ath­letes em­ployed by the Min­istry of Sports were forced in­to tak­ing no-pay leave when trav­el­ing to Toron­to for the Pan Amer­i­can Games last month.

Ac­cord­ing to Lewis, the ath­letes' short-term con­tracts did not make pro­vi­sions for spe­cial leave. How­ev­er, he not­ed it would be dif­fi­cult for elite ath­letes to be giv­en spe­cial treat­ment by their em­ploy­ers when the Min­istry of Sport could not ac­com­mo­date its own.

"I was very dis­qui­et­ed to be in­formed about this," he said. "I think the fact that they were em­ployed by the Min­istry of Sport rais­es some fun­da­men­tal ques­tions. Where is the moral au­thor­i­ty now to ex­pect that cor­po­rate T&T and oth­er em­ploy­ers will con­sid­er rep­re­sent­ing your coun­try as na­tion­al ser­vice. I'm not say­ing it as a crit­i­cism, I'm say­ing it as an ob­ser­va­tion and it's an is­sue that needs to be dealt with up­front."

Lewis stressed that the coun­try need­ed to cre­ate an en­vi­ron­ment which would en­able its ath­letes to reach their full po­ten­tial.

"We still have a lot of work to do and the TTOC is re­al­ly try­ing to deep­en the whole ath­lete-cen­tered ap­proach," he said. "If we re­al­ly want to achieve ten or more Olympic medals by 2024, we need to en­sure our ath­letes have what they need."

Lewis did com­mend the Min­istry for its new 'Podi­um Push' ini­tia­tive, though he was await­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tion about whether it would af­fect ex­ist­ing pro­grammes.

"We have to make sure it is aligned with our var­i­ous pro­grammes al­ready in place," he said. "I am a big sup­port­er of our Elite Ath­letes As­sis­tance Pro­gramme. Yes, it needs to be re­vamped and re­viewed. It has been Cab­i­net-ap­proved. It as­sures that the TTOC is part of the process which makes for bet­ter trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty, bet­ter fair­ness and eq­ui­ty.

"I think it is im­por­tant there­fore that what­ev­er is com­ing up acts as a com­pli­ment and not a re­place­ment for the EAAP. The re­al­i­ty is that we are in an en­vi­ron­ment where due to the drop in oil and gas rev­enue, the Min­istry of Fi­nance has called for belt tight­en­ing. If we are com­ing up with an­oth­er pro­gramme, is it go­ing to be at the ex­pense of the EAAP? I think all these things need to be looked at."