Namal to meet all Olympic Sports Associations tomorrow
Sports Minister Namal Rajapaksa will meet representatives from all National Sports Associations tomorrow to discuss about the proposed high-performance training programme for top national athletes targeting the forthcoming 2021 Olympic Games, 2022 Asian Games and 2022 Commonwealth Games.
Rajapaksa appointed a two-tier High-Performance Committee, which also includes members from the National Sports Council. He has tasked them with preparing plans to fund and develop performance of Sri Lanka’s top athletes targeting forthcoming International events.
All National Sports Associations faced fresh problems with the COVID-19 pandemic, as many had found it difficult to continue training of their national teams, while their plans had also been hampered due to continuous changes in the local as well as international calendar. Training and preparation had also been hampered in several isolated areas of the country where most of the stadiums are located.
Matale sports mess-up
Meanwhile, Minister Rajapaksa made an inspection tour of sports facilities available inMatale and Kandy on Saturday, and was furious at the incompetence of engineers and officials were responsible for the Matale sports facilities project. He even instructedthe Ministry Secretary to conduct an internal audit into the matter, and apologisedto the athletes for what has happened to the Matale facilities, while promising to sort out the matter soon.
“The existing facilities have been destroyed due to bad or lack of management; that’s the issue here. We have already discussed with the Army to lay a new synthetic hockey turf to Nadimithra Ekanayake Stadium and allocated Rs 50 million from next year’s budget. Also, for Edward Stadium, we are planning to build a grass court,”said Rajapaksa.
“Bernard Aluwihare Stadium plan is very unsuccessful. We are saddened because officials of our Ministry too were involved with that,especially since all these projects have been unsuccessful despite lots of government funding. I have advised the Secretary to conduct an inquiry into the matter.In the meantime, we will finish work onthe football stadium by 1 January and the swimming pool will be finished up 2-3 weeks later. But the Athletics Stadium has to be redesigned. I don’t understand what kind of engineers has designed this,” added Rajapaksa.
He also stated budgetary allocation will be made to build a synthetic track at BogambaraStadium in Kandy.
Franchise based sports leagues
Rajapaksa also said like just like the Lanka Premier League for cricket, franchise-based sporting leagues will be introduced for other sports as well to generate income, to make his dream of a billion Dollar Sports Economy a reality. He said that by next year franchise-based leagues will be introduced for Kabaddi and beach volleyball, while football too will go in for a two-tier franchise-based league, with the second-tier competition to include six new teams.
He has already announced several 7s rugby leagues for next year,an area in which he has great experience, since he successfully organized the franchise-based Carlton Super 7s sporting eventprior to 2015.
Apart from that, he also stated that he encourages Sri Lanka to host many international competitions, be it athletics or international marathon, to develop Sri Lanka sports to be an income generating source rather than just spending tax-payers money.
