Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport, Charles Ramson Jr., says he will be reviewing the current draft of the Sports Policy left by the previous administration while emphasizing the priority government has placed on having it completed.
According to Ramson Jr., who hosted an interactive session with the media yesterday at Duke Lodge, Kingston, “It’s a top priority for me, the Act. I don’t know when last you had an opportunity to look at it. It is a requirement in the Act, the Sports Policy is a requirement in the Act.”
The attorney-at-law added:”While it doesn’t go into the details to say exactly what should be the contents of the Sports Policy because I think you shouldn’t have an Act saying what would be the policy for sports, a government must have its own policy.”
Ramson noted, “That is something that it is a requirement of the Act. We don’t want to fall far from that. We don’t want to be perpetrators of being unlawful and the second is the Sports Policy is going to drive the momentum and what we are going to be doing.
“Once I have the concurrence of my President and Cabinet then that is something I would like to do immediately.”
He suggested that there will be inclusionary works done on the policy whereby both media and various stakeholders can have meaningful consultations on the policy. “I can say once there is no other urgent matters, we can have that engagement within the next couple of months because we are going to share that with the point person the media houses say this is the person we are engaging with, we are going to share that with you and then have a session like this, where it is a working session,” he stated.
Meanwhile, Ramson Jr., was not opposed to working with the current policy that is still in its draft stage. He detailed that it is dependent on an assessment but will not be a lot of work since it “is just changing words.”
When asked about using the policy he responded, “We are going to start with that, so starting with that is only to assess whether it is good or not, if it’s something good that we can work with then yes we can do that but if it’s bad, if it doesn’t match what the modern world of sport looks like then we have to kick it all over again but my initial position to review what exists because the change is changing words not like building a whole new building, it doesn’t require me to do a lot if I want to require to change it.”
