Sad Sports
Saga
THE lack of preparation for
the forthcoming Ninth South Asia Federation (SAF) Games has again brought to light the
wretched state that National Sports Council, the country’s apex sports body, is in.
The sad saga of Nepal’s sports continues. With barely two months left for the SAF
Games to begin in Islamabad from October 7, sports officials are engaged in budgetary
subjects and not in how best to run closed camps for the participating athletes.
Cash-strapped as the national exchequer is, its request for a 40-million-rupee budget for
preparation and participation is likely to be unmet by a long margin. Most likely, it will
have to be content with sending to Pakistan a much smaller contingent than a 235-member
squad it is thinking of. What’s wrong with sending a small, compact squad to
Islamabad? Nothing. Granted, the South Asian sports jamboree is a significant sports event
in this part of the world, but spending millions of rupees in the name of regional or
international exposure would be unjustified, when Nepal’s sports house is in such a
disorder.
Signs of the disorder are
aplenty. One of the major indications of the NSC disarray is its elephantine shape. Huge
yearly budgetary allocations are eaten up by administrative expenses of this highly
overstaffed behemoth, having been used often as a recruiting centre over the years. Which
means that yearly investment in sports development programmes get a short shrift in the
scheme of things. Why does it need a bloated staff of 1226 when much less should be
sufficient? The government has rightly asked it to cut back staff positions to around 370
so that the yearly budgetary pains are eased. It must immediately take steps to do it. As
to the participation in the Islamabad sports congregation, the government should release a
reasonable amount of money without delay in order that preparation could begin. It is a
gauge of NSC’s general mismanagement that the talk of preparation begins when a major
sports meet is right at the doorstep. For the last Games held in Kathmandu, athletes had
trained in closed camps for nine months. This time even the selection of the final list of
athletes for intensive training is still not finalised. Things being so, together with the
omission of some martial arts events for Islamabad meet, it is quite unlikely that
Nepal’s haul there would match the 33 gold it collected in the Kathmandu Games when
it stood second in the overall tally. But more fundamental than the participation in the
coming SAF Games is the task of revamping the NSC.
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