DG interdict after Friday night debacle
- Junior team for South Asian Juniors without water and electricity for 12 hours
- Minister intervened to arrange a hotel for the team
- Manager’s failure once again highlighted , inquiry to follow
- Athlete mislead to sign a false letter
Director General of Sports, Buwaneka Herath was interdict after he failed to maintain the sports ministry hostel at Torrington square on Friday night as Sri Lanka team for South Asian Junior Athletics championship had to go through another agony ahead of yesterday’s championship as they were without water and electricity since 10am in the morning until late night.
After media intervene the issue and informed the sports ministry regarding the matter, Minister Faizer Musthapha visited the premises and arranged a hotel in Bambalapitiya for the team at night.
Musthapha also had taken measures to interdict DG Herath with immediate effect for failing to maintain the sports hostel. Nevertheless neither official from department of sports development nor responsible official from the Athletics association (AASL) were present there. To top that the controversial team manager Anil Weerasinghe had not taken action even after hours of water and power cut to responsible authorities or to inform sports ministry while he had been missing from the scene for hours.
Sri Lanka Junior athletics team of 83 athletes was forced for a residential training throughout last week at Sports hostel of Torrington square but behavior of Manager Anil Weerasinghe came under huge criticism as he failed to maintain a proper atmosphere for athletes throughout the week. Several former athletes came forward with similar stories of his failure as management in important issues , his misbehavior and bullying of Weerasinghe as he was the manager of SL team for the first south Asian junior athletics championship in 2007 and to the second junior athletics championship in 2013.
Highlight of those editions was Sri Lanka losing a possible gold medal in 2013 edition as Weerasinghe’s language difficulty had result in not informing organizers about events overlap of SL athlete Sarangi Silva who missed long jump gold medal despite been the favorite as she missed her last attempts of the long jump due to the 4x100m relay worked off the same time.
After Ceylon today reported everything earlier this week, Weerasinghe’s associate, Coach Chandimal Niroshan sent a letter signed by more than 40 athletes stating the said articles was false. But when contacted the signed athletes, they said they were misled to sign the said letter. As for athletes they had given a piece of paper asking for signature indicating that everyone who’s staying at hostel should sign it.
But once athlete got to know what they signed, they had cut down their names and signatures from the list (Ceylon today possess the video and audio of the incident). Nevertheless Sports Ministry secretary Jayantha Weerasekara stated he will conduct an inquiry by appointing Saman Amarasinghe to conduct the process.
