We don’t look at any body’s race and determine this is what you get – Minister Anthony

Oct 15, 2013 Sports

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NSC to come up with criteria to reward athletes

By Franklin Wilson
Minister of Sport Dr. Frank Anthony has sought to clear the air on the perception of his ministry’s treatment of athletes of one race as opposed to another. The minister’s comments are directly linked to an article published in this newspaper on October 9, under the headline, “Stoby wants level playing field for black athletes”.
Minister Anthony said that he did have conversation with Mr. Stoby on supporting him but as far as he is aware, Stoby did not follow up with his Ministry for support when he was going to his latest competition, the World Masters Championships in Orlando, Florida, last month.

“If he doesn’t come in and talk to us I can’t know that Mr. Stoby is going off to a competition, he said that we didn’t support him, but we didn’t know.”
Anthony said that it is normal that the association would inform the ministry through writing, requesting support with the departure tax waiver and reduction of tickets but he couldn’t recall anything coming in for Mr. Stoby.
“Most people will tell you that when such requests are made of us we try to work and facilitate it.”
The minister sought to debunk the notion of him discriminating along ethnic lines: “I think that he should disabuse his mind of that. If we want to look at ethnicity then that would take us down the wrong road. We have a very open policy; we don’t look at any body’s race and determine this is what you get.”
Minister Anthony stated that it was the powerlifting federation that had approached his ministry after Gumendra Shewdas’ accomplishment of winning the 53kg class gold medal at the World Junior and Sub Junior Championships held in Killeen, Texas in August, noting that it was a remarkable feat for them and that it should somehow be highlighted.
“They recommended that perhaps one of the things that we can do is to have a luncheon and we acceded to that request and it was not only a luncheon for Shewdas alone, it was the entire federation that showed up including Mr. Stoby. Apart from remarking about Gumendra’s successes we also spoke about the association and some of the high flyers of the association.”
Rewarding athletes
When quizzed on whether he would agree that his ministry needs to be doing much more in terms of tangible rewards for our athletes who excel at the Caribbean and international levels, this was Anthony’s response:
“How do you compare somebody, maybe in powerlifting with somebody in athletics, how do you decide what is the benchmark for rewards and when do we start rewarding and with what?
These things are not straightforward in terms of having a clear policy, right now it is done in a very ad hoc way, sometime the association recommends to us and based on that we would do something.”
The minister informed that the National Sports Commission (NSC) has now been tasked with the responsibility looking at all the sporting disciplines to come up, in a very dispassionate way, with a set of criteria by which the ministry can make awards. The NSC has since set up a sub-committee to undertake this task.
“Of course these rewards would have to be done in keeping with the resources that we have. One of the things that people would commonly ask us for is duty free concession for vehicles and we have asked them {NSC} to review in their deliberations how we can actually do this as well. So we’ll wait on those recommendations and when we agree on them, we’ll publish them so that everybody will know that once you meet this bench mark, this is what you would get.”
National Sports Policy
Minister Anthony was also asked to comment on the status of the National Sports Policy which has been in the working for a number of years but not yet officially adapted.
“It’s there, and again we’ve been implementing major parts of it, the Sports Commission, when they started their work they asked that they would like to have a review of it, they have had it for some time now and we are waiting on them to perhaps say what else they want to add to it.”
It was noted that the associations and federations can use the policy in its existing form; “Nothing stops them from doing that, but it’s constantly being updated. People should take guidance from it and start using it, they don’t have to wait until we say this is now official, in all the spheres that we have, we have been pushing and implementing and I would advice all the associations to do the same. Just use what is there, use it as guidance and if you think that there are things outside of the policy that you want to do, then talk to us.”

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