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Sports

SAF Games in August 2006?
A baton burning hot
By S.R. Pathiravithana
There is a valiant effort made by the Ministry of Sports to steady the work progress of the somewhat derailed work chart of the South Asian Federation Games which is scheduled to take off five months hence.

In their haste to make things moving, a two day workshop has been organized by the Ministry of Sports where the Ministry will meet representatives from the 23 working committees who are appointed to set the SAF games in motion at Bandarawela from tomorrow till the 1st of March. Besides the abovementioned there also will be members of the National Olympic Council, SAF secretariat, representatives of the participating sports associations and the coaches of the respective sports.

It is interesting to note that with only five months remaining whether there is sufficient time to put the train back on track. According to Milton Amerasinghe of the Ministry of sports “This workshop was organized because the progress of the work schedule was not upto the mark”. But, when asked who was going to foot the bill for this two day outing he said “Obviously it is from the SAF games funds”.

Fund raising for the SAF games is another question at hand. The games which were billed at approximately Rs. 400 – 500 million a year ago has gone up to over Rs. 900 million.

When asked about this the secretary Ministry of Sports S. Wirithamulla said that “There are some monies already allocated towards the games. Any association who sends acceptable expenses sheets towards the training of the games will be and has been reimbursed.

“A country like Sri Lanka gets an event of this magnitude may be once in ten years or more. We will never get the Olympic Games or the Commonwealth Games and the last time we got this event was in 1991 for the 5th SAF games. At these games our role is two faceted. On one side we have to organize and conduct the games like real hosts and on the other we must see to it that we win the maximum number of medals possible.

The cost of the games is going be in the region of Rs. 905 million and so far we have received an allocation of Rs. 122 million towards the expenses. We have had discussions with the treasury and they have promised us further allocations, but still we will have to get the support of the private sector for some assistance too. However I am confident that we can find the necessary funds as required on time.

However according to knowledgeable sources, with only five months to go and hardly anything happening -- infrastructure wise or medal hope wise even if the games go on it would be a huge flop.

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