By Floyd Christie
President of the Guyana Olympic Association (GOA), K.A. Juman Yassin has implored the Ministry of Sport and Sport Minister Dr. Frank Anthony to give more support to athletes travelling abroad to compete at international events.
Yassin’s plea for further support came at the GOA’s appreciation and awards ceremony held at the Georgetown Club Saturday evening.
Speaking to the gathering of dignitaries, including Minister Anthony, Yassin declared that a lot of development has been forthcoming from the sports minister.
“Things are happening and I wish to thank him,” [Anthony] said Yassin.
However, Yassin noted: “Unfortunately, I also wish to say that the sports associations in 2010 have not benefitted from the government in assistance towards travelling to games, towards assisting in training and also for games that were held last year, example South American Games and Central American and Caribbean (CAC) Games and Commonwealth Games”.
“There was no assistance really and so I sincerely hope that in this particular year of 2011 that there may be some more momentum towards the granting of assistance for teams going abroad,” Yassin added.
Yassin stated that the GOA and the ministry of sport “have had a wonderful association” but the minister failed to deliver on a lot of promises.
“The minister made a lot of promises for funding; submit proposals, submit names, submit estimates, when you come up at the end of the day, you got nothing, but I’m hoping Sir {Anthony], things will change,” said Yassin.
However, in response to Yassin, while also addressing the gathering, Dr. Anthony declared that attention needs to be focused on development of athletes at home before they go to the international stage.
“For too long we have trivialized sports, we treat it like a recreational thing and that is why it is not developed. Because we don’t have many strong developmental programmes, the athletes that go out to represent us, many of them come out by an ad hoc process.
“If we are really going to dominate and win on the world stage then we have to focus our energy on putting those developmental programmes in place,” he said.
Meanwhile, Dr. Anthony declared that he will not apologize for putting government money into two areas – the school system, which according to him is “really necessary” and in the community.
“If they aren’t enough money to send teams abroad, then that is because we are investing the money in communities and schools. We have to have a balance.
“Yes, we would like to have people to go out there and represent us but in some cases people have been coming to us to send an athlete abroad when we know they don’t even have the times required for the event that they are going to. So we know from the word go that they are not going to qualify.
“But we send them because an argument is made that we need to get them out there to have international exposure. We need to fix our house… let us fix our houses, because by doing that and putting in the developmental programmes I think we can truly make a difference in sports,” said Dr. Anthony.
