Six medals from eight athletes is extremely commendable

Apr 03, 2013 Sports

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– The Sport Ministry must enact its ‘partnership’ rhetoric

By Edison Jefford
Six CARFITA Games medals from eight athletes represent a success rate of 75% for Guyana at the competition that is holistically viewed as the Caribbean’s premier junior track and field meet, and the springboard to the world youth and junior levels.
The extremely commendable performance from the athletes that represented Guyana in Bahamas over the last weekend should be seen as the beginning of rewarding careers in athletics, and must monetarily motivate the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport.
Before the team left Guyana, a courtesy call was placed to the Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport, Dr.  Frank Anthony, who had spoken at the Athletics Association of Guyana (AAG) Awards only a week before. The minister was monotonous on both occasions.
He, one, urged the athletes to do well for Guyana at the CARIFTA Games – “…we would like to see gold medals…” was his direct request of the team; secondly, he spoke of a glorified synthetic track for which construction is still underway; and thirdly, he pleaded for a ‘partnership’ with the subject association moving forward.

Well, the dust has settled in the Bahamas and Guyanese proudly boasts of two gold medals, three bronze medals and a silver medal. Those performances should test the minister’s rhetoric prior to the team’s departure, and his understanding of ‘partnership’.
Categorically, the synthetic track has been lots of rhetoric at Leonora. Constant contract signings and completion dates, but nothing concrete. Yet at every opportunity, Dr. Anthony mentions this project to the athletics community like a rat-catcher waving a piece of cheese.
The synthetic track started around November 2010. If you count the months that construction has been ongoing at the site, it would amount to 30 months, and the issues have been nothing that the athletics community should pay for as is currently happening.
For example, one of the issues was a contractor’s failure to complete works on a parameter fence after the ministry’s issuance of a contract; the contractor only realised after receiving the contract that he singularly lacked the requisite competence to build the fence.
The issue forced the ministry to re-issue the same contract to two different contractors, obviously losing money and time in the process. The last that was heard on this matter was that the ministry has moved to the Courts to recover tax payers’ dollars that was handed out to the contractor, who defaulted.
The new date for the actual laying of the synthetic track that came out of the ministry was given late last year as being mid 2013; the minister told his athletics audience last week that the surface for laying the track has been completed. Mid-2013 is two months away.
Then there is the minister’s talk of ‘partnership’, but does the minister understand what the word he bellowed at the athletics community actually mean. This performance from Guyana at what is the Caribbean’s highest level will answer that question further.
But from observations, it is clear that the ministry’s understanding of partnership and partnership in the ideal sense have two different connotations. For instance, the ministry’s support of what is a national team would have moved passed merely waiving airport taxes for the touring delegation under the ideal sense of the concept, ‘partnership’.
But that has been the ministry’s role with national athletics teams time immemorial; the rhetoric of the synthetic track is as if to convince the athletics community that the ministry’s contribution to the sport is at its maximum with the advent of the facility.
Under the ideal context of partnership, the ministry would have ensured that the touring Guyana team was properly housed in the Bahamas prior to the opening of the Games Village.
But, had it not been for the Guyana/Bahamas Association in the Bahamas, and the efforts of its Chairperson, Coreen Douglas, Guyana could have been left embarrassingly wanting.
Against those odds, and no support from Government but a presumptuous call for gold medals at the CARIFTA Games and perhaps a waiver of a US $20 airport tax, Guyana finished sixth of the 19 countries that participated at the Games with a haul of six medals.
If the minister must be reminded, a partnership is a hand-in-glove arrangement with either parties or number of parties, understanding their respective roles, thereby fuelling a working relationship to ensure general success. Historic and current ministry practices and behaviour suggest anything but a partnership with the athletics community.
Judging from what the minister said; his understanding of partnership is the subject association’s submission of a development plan. However, the minister and his ministry failed to indicate what role it will take in enacting a development plan when it is produced.
We have been here before with a host of talented junior athletes producing in the region and not progressing past that level. The names will be too numerous to mention here but had the ministry understood what partnership meant then maybe Guyana, by now, would have progressed further internationally than this resounding CARFITA Games success.
Partnerships in countries like Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Barbados, Grenada, Bahamas and a few others, between Government and sport associations, have gone pass rhetoric, which is one of the key reasons why those countries are in the top tier of athletics in the region, and even beyond, as is the case with Jamaica and Trinidad.
Those Governments have put their monies where their mouths are in ensuring that their brightest and most talented prospects develop pass CARIFTA to international superstars, even if it is fully funding their education at top athletics-oriented colleges overseas.
Again, for emphasis, the question must be asked, does this Government and its Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport really understand what partnership means? History has proven that they do not, and the athletics community, as a result, ought to band together and build from this success and not be bogged down with rhetoric.

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