No more voting rights for School Associations
Mandatory Vice Presidency post and seat at the Executive Committee
Following a request by the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Sports decided to discard the voting rights of the Schools Association’s at the elections of National Sports Bodies from 2017,but instead offer them a seat in the Executive Committee and give one of their representatives to be appointed as a Vice President.
During the Athletics Association’s elections yesterday the Schools Athletics Association was asked to leave the premises when the Sports Ministry representative forwarded a copy of the said letter. Sports Ministry had sent the letter on 5 May but AASL had failed to notify the Schools Association regarding the contents till yesterday.
Nevertheless, Special Consultant to the Education Minister, Sunil Jayaweera, said they made the request after a collective decision at the Education Ministry in order to reduce corruption and allow schools to have better coordination with the National Body in order to develop school sports as well as at National level.
“There have been instances where School’s representatives used their votes for money and other benefits and when the School’s Association ended up voting on the losing candidates at the National Sports Associations’ (NSA) elections, NSA’s tendency was to isolate the Schools Association,” said Jayaweera replying a query from Ceylon Today.
“We can’t develop school sports or the National sports when there are disputes between the Schools’ Association and NSA’s, so we took this decision which will ensure that the school body has a representative in the National body,” said Jayaweera.
Accordingly, a representative from the Schools’ Association will be appointed to a post of vice presidency, and they will have a seat in the Executive Committee without voting rights.
Nevertheless, representatives from the School Sports Associations are not happy about the change, especially the depriving of the voting rights in the executive committee to influence with the decision making process.
“We will sort it out with the Education Ministry as they did not consult us before taking such a decision and conveying it to the Sports Ministry,” said a representative from the Schools Sports Association on condition of anonymity.
