NSC non-performance leaves sports in tatlers

By Narayan Upadhyay

Nation’s apex sports body is in disarray. Its woebegone chief guardian, the Member Secretary, has come under fire over the financial irregularities. The allegation of financial embezzlement has come from non other than the Parliament’s Public Account Committee. And Member-Secretary Binod Shankar Palikhe’s replies to the PAC, rather than helping his causes, has worsened matters for him. It has, needless to say, put whole national sports activities into turmoil.

Palikhe was at loss while furnishing replies to the members of PAC, which has been scrutinizing National Sports Council’s failure to show millions of rupees it was expectd to collect through the sponsorship deal of 8ht South Asian Federation Games (SAFG). Palikhe beat about the bush while giving clarifications on why NSC failed to collect the large sum of money from sponsors.

His most amusing reply was that when he said that he had no written reports and other evidences because the Sports Ministry was later annexed into the Education Ministry. His reposte that the former PAC committee was "biased" against may prove detrimental to him as it may anger the members of PAC. All his answers also failed to clarify the matters. The member-secretary minced the words about the sponsor deal money. His mumbling positively hinted that some of that money had been siphoned off.

Amidst allegation of corruption in collecting money from sponsorship deal, Palikhe has also come under fire for other irregularities and administrative non-performance. He has been blamed for closing eyes while the rampant corruption are still going on in the premises of NSC. It is a well known tale that, many coaches, trainers and employees get salaries without turning up for their respective jobs at NSC . And many accuse NSC, a recruiting centre for many political workers, for providing salaries to persons who never turn up or who are now not with NSC. This is really the height of corruption in which the nation’s apex sports governing body has been involved.

Moreover, the morale of many genuine employees at NSC is down-sliding every passing day. The cause: more often than not they receive their monthly salaries after the gap of many months.

On the other hand, the main sports institution finds itself in deep water as its coffers always runs dry. As result, most of its telephone bills have not been paid and telephone lines have been disconnected by Nepal Tele Communication. The coffers of NSC, which has more than forty sports association under its wings, always remains empty. As a consequences, NSC has to look after the government for its yearly budget to run its day to day function, let along the sports programme. It has, however, failed to generate its own resources. For NSC, one of the best way to generate the resources would be to organise various sports activities to attract both spectators and sponsors. But so far NSC, under Palikhe, has failed to do so.

Rather, it has been embroiled into corruption and non-performance. Here, it may worthwhile to note that All Nepal Football Association, one of its affiliates sports association is better positioned in terms of generating resources than NSC itself. ANFA also enjoys the luxury of having good sponsors behind its programmes.

NSC might have boast of Nepalese players’ superb performance in the 8th SAF Games, but it is unlikely now that the Nepalese will repeat their performance in next SAF edition in Peshawar of Pakistan. As NSC is crippled by the lack of sufficient flow of finance, the sports programmes of the country have obviously taken the back seat. In such situation, Nepalese players are least expected to repeat their performances in the 9th SAF Games. Palikhe has also blamed for cutting or reducing the prize money for those players who came with flying colours in the various sports events such as SAF Games and othe international events that has further dented the morale of our best sportsmen for doing better in the any sports events.

While the picture for 9th SAF Games looks bleak, NSC has also made the matter worse for nation’s most popular game- football. Being the apex sports governing body, it has failed to bring peace in the nation’s beleaguered game of football. Its failure to bring the international football organizations’ recognition to the official All Nepal Football Association has already marred the nation’s football programmes. To make the matter worse, Palikhe had partly been criticized for not providing playing ground for the World Cup qualifying matches in which Nepalese national team has been scheduled to take part with other three Asian nations.

All these issues make matter much more worse for national sports. The difficulties that national sports activities have been facing is partly due to non performance of NSC led by Palikhe. The NSC and Palikhe must take the responsibility of the present chaos prevalent in the national sports arena.

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