The National Sports Commission (NSC) is one again faced with the unwillingness of associations/federations to submit proposals for their calendar of activities for 2019 and Director of Sport Christopher Jones is bashing some associations/federations for doing a terrible job at marketing their product.
According to the Director of Sport, the NSC has 41 associations/federations on record with more than 20 being major bodies who have been individually approached to submit plans in the event that they will require NSC funding especially to attend international tournaments.
However, with the deadline of August 20 already past, Jones said “only four or five associations have submitted their proposals,” indicating that the NSC tried to avoid this by requesting proposals since early June.
This has been the trend with sports organizations last year and once again it has manifested itself with the National Budget set to be unveiled in November.
The Director of Sport related to this publication that the process is simple but the bodies do not seem too keen on submitting their proposals.
“The associations submit their proposals to us, we include that in our submission to the Ministry of Finance for their approval adding that even if the budget is.. “half a billion dollars, the NSC will include that and submit it.”
Jones explained that when the associations do not submit their plans and it is not budgeted for, then they become dependent on “the already small allocation to the NSC from which they will try to squeeze it out of to facilitate them.”
In 2016, the NSC was allocated $178,699,000 while in 2017 that figure increased to $215,000,000.
Jones commended the smaller bodies for their efforts pointing out that there aren’t much challenges when it comes to them.
He said that they do not generally require lots of funding and have been up to date with their deadlines and requests on most occasions.
The Director of Sport expressed his frustration with the dependency on government funding stating that the executives of some of the associations are “doing a terrible job at marketing their products.”
Jones said that a number of the activities locally are only known a few days before and as a result the turnout is hampered.
In an effort to remedy the situation, Jones suggested that the associations/federations need to be more proactive and responsible enough to look outside of government for funding.
He said the making of athletes into brand ambassadors was one form and urged the stakeholders in the different associations/federations to look at the best interest of the sport.
In the case where there are executives who are not functioning Jones said, “if they cannot fix the problem then find new executives,” while suggesting that the executives need to build capacity in order to tap into the resources available.
