Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC), Bri­an Lewis, is urg­ing all sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions, sport ad­min­is­tra­tors and ath­letes to ad­here close­ly to the health and safe­ty guide­lines and pro­to­cols is­sued by the Min­istry of Health, to re­duce the spread of COVID-19.

“Na­tion­al teams and Na­tion­al Sport Or­gan­i­sa­tions prepar­ing for in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tions in­clud­ing Tokyo2020 qual­i­fiers must ex­er­cise strict dis­ci­pline and rig­or­ous en­force­ment of Min­istry of Health guide­lines and reg­u­la­tions,” Lewis said in a briefly word­ed state­ment is­sued to­day.

It comes on the heels of the Prime Min­is­ter’s an­nounce­ment on Sat­ur­day 7 No­vem­ber 2020, of a slight eas­ing of re­stric­tions for the sports sec­tor. Na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al teams prepar­ing for com­pe­ti­tion in the fu­ture are now al­lowed to re­sume train­ing; how­ev­er, their do­mes­tic coun­ter­parts will need to wait a while longer.

The PM al­so gave as­sur­ances that more will be done for sports once teams fol­low the health and safe­ty pro­to­cols.

Lewis strong­ly ad­vised the sport­ing fra­ter­ni­ty to en­sure “that sport not be­come a COVID-19 su­per spread­er”.

“We must in­sist on and re­main dis­ci­plined and self-reg­u­late. There is no mar­gin for er­ror,” he warned.

He added: “The trust and con­fi­dence must not be be­trayed and mis­placed. There is a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to the en­tire sport ecosys­tem. Get this wrong and sport on the whole will suf­fer.”