Ath­letes ap­ply­ing for Elite Ath­letes As­sis­tance Fund­ing (EAAP) from gov­ern­ment will have un­til April 1 to sub­mit their ap­pli­ca­tions.

The Min­istry of Sports and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment in a re­lease on Fri­day con­firmed this but it al­so made it clear that ath­letes ap­ply­ing for the fund will have to meet a cri­te­ria in­clud­ing be­ing ranked among the top 40 in the world in their re­spec­tive dis­ci­pline.

Ap­pli­cants are al­so re­quired to be an Olympic medal­list, a medal win­ner at the World Cham­pi­onships, the Com­mon­wealth Games, Pan Amer­i­can Games, Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean Games (CAC), rep­re­sent the coun­try at a sanc­tioned in­ter­na­tion­al meet and make them­selves avail­able for se­lec­tion at the stip­u­lat­ed Games with­in the Olympic qua­dren­ni­al.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease the EAAP has been on of­fer by gov­ern­ment since 2006 and has sup­port­ed over 120 dif­fer­ent ath­letes over the years. "The pro­gramme re­mains es­sen­tial to pro­vid­ing our ath­letes with a means of sub­si­diz­ing the ex­pens­es in­volved in the ath­let­ic de­vel­op­ment of our most out­stand­ing ath­letes as they work to bring glo­ry, pride and ho­n­our to T&T on the world stage.

De­spite the var­i­ous chal­lenges of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, the Min­istry of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, on be­half of the Gov­ern­ment of the Re­pub­lic of T&T, seeks to en­sure that the ef­forts of its stake­hold­ers are sup­port­ed and fa­cil­i­tat­ed. The Min­istry re­mains com­mit­ted to the de­vel­op­ment of sport and sport for de­vel­op­ment, as ar­tic­u­lat­ed in the Na­tion­al Pol­i­cy on Sport 2017 to 2027," it con­clud­ed.

Mean­while, the min­istry dis­bursed TT$1,611,787.00 in fi­nan­cial sup­port to the T&T Hock­ey Board to as­sist with the par­tic­i­pa­tion of the Se­nior men's and women's teams for the 2022 Se­nior Pan Amer­i­can Cup in San­ti­a­go, Chile from Jan­u­ary 19-30.

Last year a mix-up in the lan­guage, of a PCR (poly­merase chain re­ac­tion) re­port, caused the T&T ju­nior men’s hock­ey team to be un­able to get off the plane in Chile.

Yes­ter­day Min­is­ter Sham­fa Cud­joe reaf­firmed that her gov­ern­ment will con­tin­ue to in­vest in sports and its ath­letes de­spite the dif­fi­cult eco­nom­ic times due to the glob­al im­pact of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.