KUALA LUMPUR − The Youth and Sports Ministry (KBS) has been urged to empower the sports industry secretariat to help coordinate between the national sports associations (NSA) and the corporate sector, especially companies in sports-related businesses.
National Sports and Fitness Association (NaSFA) president Datuk V. Radhakrishnan said it will help the NSAs to attract sponsorships by ensuring a proper approach and return for the sponsors.
“The secretariat can play the role as the bridge between NSAs and the industry players by collecting the needs, key performance indicators and targets from NSAs and link them with the suitable sponsors. This is to increase the confidence towards sponsoring NSAs because some of them did not have proper accounts and development plans.
“The previous Rakan Sukan programme initiated by former Youth and Sports Minister Datuk Abdul Ghani Othman started off well but after that, some NSAs failed to deliver and did not have a proper plan, so the corporate firms started to pull out,” he told Bernama.
Radhakrishnan − the former Malaysian Hockey Confederation (MHC) vice-president − said if the current fund cut for the National Sports Council (NSC) is not addressed properly, it will be a “recipe for disaster” as the nation is preparing to face three major multi-sports Games – the SEA, Asian and Commonwealth Games – this year.
“NSAs and athletes are in a very crucial phase of preparations for the major Games − slashing funds now will affect their performance. I hope KBS and NSC will relook into the matter because unless a white knight comes, it will be difficult to save the sports sector because it is not easy to secure sponsorship in the current situation in such a short time,” he added.
Meanwhile, Malaysia Canoe Association (Masca) president Datuk Michael Wong Meng San said the NSAs should be more creative in securing funds to manage their athletes and development programmes amid the current challenging situations rather than being overdependent on government funding.
“Like Masca, all this while, we are not under (the) NSC programme but we still managed to send athletes for tournaments. Even though our athletes are not paid monthly allowances, they still train on their own for their patriotism and love for the country.
“Some are even taking part-time jobs, like Khairul Naim Zainal, who worked as a food delivery personnel and still managed to break national records this year. And though we are not under (the) NSC programme, NSC still provides a lot of support for us,” he said.
Michael said it’s not fair to criticise the NSC for the fund cuts when the current economic situation is very challenging and the priority for the government is to recover from the effects of the global Covid-19 pandemic. – Bernama, January 11, 2022
