Min­is­ter of Sport and Youth Af­fairs Sham­fa Cud­joe wants to see a greater in­vest­ment in the "grass­roots" of sports.

Speak­ing on the CNC3 tele­vi­sion Morn­ing Brew (TMB) pro­gramme yes­ter­day, the Min­is­ter al­so told host Hema Ramkissoon that a lack of co­op­er­a­tion in na­tion­al sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions (NSOs) is mak­ing lo­cal ath­letes suf­fer.

When asked her thoughts about the on­go­ing dis­cus­sions to merge the T&T Su­per League and the T&T Pro League, Cud­joe said she is hap­py that the con­ver­sa­tions are tak­ing place. How­ev­er, she said her con­cerns stretch be­yond foot­ball.

"The state of foot­ball con­cerns me and you’ll be sur­prised that you have sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions tak­ing place in oth­er dis­ci­plines and it’s sad to see the ath­letes suf­fer be­cause the heads can­not get along or refuse to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion and sup­port to each oth­er," Cud­joe said.

As the mid-year bud­get re­view takes place on Mon­day, Min­is­ter Cud­joe al­so gave an up­date on how she has been jug­gling her al­lo­ca­tion. While she ad­mit­ted she would have loved to have more re­sources and fi­nances avail­able to her, she said the gov­ern­ment has thus far made good on its com­mit­ment to fund all na­tion­al teams com­pet­ing re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

"There’s a cer­tain lev­el of sup­port you’d like to give but you can­not," the Min­is­ter said.

How­ev­er, while say­ing her min­istry has met the de­mands of ath­letes and or­gan­i­sa­tions com­pet­ing abroad, Cud­joe told TMB she would like to pay more at­ten­tion to grass­roots ath­letes.

The rep­re­sen­ta­tive for To­ba­go West stat­ed, “It’s not just about trav­el­ling abroad. We have to make a greater in­vest­ment in sport de­vel­op­ment at the very ear­ly stages be­fore you even qual­i­fy to get to the na­tion­al team to rep­re­sent T&T abroad.”

Part of her plan is al­so to re­fur­bish var­i­ous sta­dia across the coun­try. How­ev­er, she says the gov­ern­ment will not be able to take all the projects at once. In­stead, she con­firmed both the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um and the Jean Pierre Com­plex will be­gin be­ing re­fur­bished in this fis­cal year while oth­ers will be tak­en up in the next fi­nan­cial year.

“All these things form pieces of the puz­zle that we wish we would have got­ten more mon­ey to in­vest in but we are tak­ing it in bits and pieces,” said Min­is­ter Cud­joe, who al­so con­firmed she has had talks with new Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) pres­i­dent Ricky Sker­ritt re­cent­ly and is "ex­cit­ed about the new pos­si­bil­i­ties".

She said she has found the new ex­ec­u­tive "re­fresh­ing" in its ap­proach for a more Caribbean-cen­tred West In­dies crick­et.