DG interdicted after Friday night fiasco | Inquiry against Manager Anil
By Anjana Kaluarachchi
Director General of Sports, Buwaneka Herath was interdicted after he failed to properly maintain the hostel at the Sports Ministry, Torrington Square that was revealed on Friday night. Here the Sri Lankan team for the South Asian Junior Athletic Championship had to go through another agonizing day ahead of yesterday’s championship as they were without water and electricity from 10 a.m. to late night.
After the media intervened with the issue and informed the Sports Ministry regarding the matter, Minister Faiszer Musthapha visited the premises and arranged for a hotel at Bambalapitiya to accommodate the team that night.
Musthapha also had taken measures to interdict DG Herath with immediate effect for failing to maintain the sports hostel. Nevertheless, neither official from the Department of Sports Development nor a responsible official from the Athletics Association (AASL) were present there. To top that all, the controversial team manager Anil Weerasinghe had not taken action, even after hours of water and electricity being cut, failing to notify responsible authorities or to inform the sports ministry in time and he had been missing from the scene for hours.
Sri Lanka Junior athletic team of 83 athletes were forced in for a residential training throughout last week at the sports hostel at Torrington Square. With that, the behaviour of the manager Anil Weerasinghe came under acute criticism for his failure to maintain a proper environment for athletes throughout the week. Several former athletes came forward with similar stories of his failure since management is an important issue, his misbehaviour and bullying as the manager of the SL team for the first South Asian Junior Athletic Championship in 2007 and at the second junior athletic championship in 2013 were highlighted by them.
Impressionable incident at those editions was Sri Lanka losing a possible gold medal in the 2013 edition as Weerasinghe’s language barrier resulted in the organizers not being informed about events overlapping. In this case SL athlete Sarangi Silva missed the long jump gold medal despite being the favourite. She missed her last few attempts in long jump due to the 4x100m relay being worked off at 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 that the published articles were false. But, when contacted, those athletes who had signed said that they were misled to do so. As explained by the athletes they had been given a piece of paper asking for their signature to be put in there, indicating that everyone who’s staying at the hostel should sign it.
But once athletes got to know what they really signed, they had cut off their names and signatures from the list (Ceylon Today possesses the video and audio of the incident). Nevertheless, the Sports Ministry’s secretary Jayantha Weerasekara stated that he will conduct an inquiry by appointing Saman Amarasinghe to dig into the matter.
