– To host national championships September 13 at National Stadium
Once again the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport is pushing to move another game from its habitual bottom house and street corner status to a more organized level.
For years the game of draughts, popularly known as checkers, has been a past-time sport in Guyana while sister Caribbean countries like Suriname and Barbados have developed the game to a more organized and international level.
On Wednesday at a press conference the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport announced that it would give its utmost support towards the setting up of a steering committee to administer the game.
They have also given an end-of-the-year time frame for an association to be put in place.
“The ultimate objective is to have the game played on an organized competitive basis locally.
“Then we want to be affiliated to the international body and then eventually have a few persons representing us at the international level and I must say that my ministry is fully prepared to give our fullest support to this,” Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport, Dr. Frank Anthony.
Dr. Anthony, since his tenure in office, has been advocating for the organized associations to control common board games such as chess which is now being governed by a chess federation.
“We think that this is a good idea to have the draughts association set up because as you know it’s a game that is played in almost every house hold and if we can transform those interests to a more organized and national one, I think it would be very successful,” Dr. Anthony declared.
Jai Ram, who approached the ministry because of his profound interest for the sport, and who also heads the steering committee, said that at present they were looking at other constitutions from already established associations so that they can emulate them in some way in setting up theirs.
He added that it was easy to transform the game from a past time sport to more organized one because the board game was already popular.
Jai Ram noted that the last national championships was played in the late 1980’s.