Director of Sports Christopher Jones says that sports associations have not been submitting yearly calendar of events to the National Sports Commis-sion (NSC) and, as such, the NSC is unable to fully fund sports teams competing in regional tournaments.
The APNU/AFC coalition had in its mandate prior to last year’s general elections had promised to fully fund sports teams competing in regional tournaments but this has not been the case.
Jones explained why.
“The mandate does speak to that but what happened is that the associations over the years have not been submitting their calendar of activities for the year ahead. As a result of that, the NSC was unable to cater for them by making submissions to the Ministry of Finance to offset those expenses.
“We have reiterated this point to all of the associations when we met with them last year on December 12 and we are hopeful that as of August this year, they can make their submissions of the calendar of activities for 2017.
So when the NSC makes a request to the Ministry of Finance, we can be able to justify those requests stating that several associations will be participating in regional or international tournaments and these are the cost factors attached to them.”
Jones said that a few “small associations” did provide calendar of activities for the year but according to him, “those are essentially the ones that don’t participate in regional tournaments. We are looking for the major associations such as the football federation, the basketball association, the swimming association and the athletic association just to name a few.”
Jones also disclosed that there has been an increase of G$20m in this year’s budgetary allocation for sports.
The sum of $186M has been allocated to sport from the 2016 national budget and according to Jones, the funds will be used to continue capital works and to support sporting associations.
“Essentially this is an increase of $20M as compared to last year’s submission and we will be able to play a more significant role.
“We would have submitted our calendar of activities as of last year to the Ministry of Finance but because of the increase that has been made available to us, we are now able to lend more support to sporting associations in that regard in terms of requests to send their athletes abroad.
The Director of Sport also said that the NSC will “widen our programme of activities to far flung regions.”
“In the past we were unable to do so because of financial constraints so, for example, you will hear of programmmes being had in Regions One, Nine and Eight which we didn’t have before.”
Expounding on some of the capital works, Jones told this publication that,”What is happening in 2016 is a continuation of works that are being done at the National Aquatic Centre, this is the redoing of the viewing gallery.
“The refurbishment of the washroom facility at the Cliff Anderson Sports Hall as well as the western portion of the roof and, of course, it’s noteworthy to mention that the refurbishment of the washroom facility is meant to cater for the differently-abled and we are actually installing stalls that will cater for the differently-abled.”
Jones said that works will continue to be done to the National Gymnasium which include securing the fencing as well as internal and external painting and landscaping.
Quizzed on the Racquet Centre Jones said, “those works have been completed which spoke to upgrading the squash courts as well as providing locker room spaces under the bleachers that we have there.”
On Thursday, the NSC presented cheques worth in excess of $3M to eight sporting associations as well as Help and Shelter.
