LETTERS: While early reactions are positive, is the RM72 million allocation for sports in the 2024 Budget enough?
This is in reference to the RM52 million to upgrade sports facilities and RM20 million for the Road to Gold initiative under the Youth and Sports Ministry.
Is it enough to cover costs for centralised training, competition and allowance purposes?
When tabling the 2024 budget, the prime minister said that RM12 million out of the allotted sports budget would be provided to the National Sports Council for training programmes, as well as preparing for international competitions.
That would be a challenging task unless our national sports associations have sponsors to help with additional finance.
Then what about our paralympics athletes and grassroots development programmes to uncover new talent to increase our talent pool for the future?
Talent scouting and the nurturing and developing of new talents will equire more funding.
After all, we did better than expected in Hangzhou during the 19th Asian Games with a medal haul of six gold, eight silver and 18 bronze, being placed 14th on the medal tally table out of 45 nations.
Our target was 27 medals and having surpassed it gives great satisfaction to the stakeholders of the various sports. It, therefore, should be food for thought for the government.
In this regard, as our focus will now turn to the 2024 Paris Olympics, the government can consider an additional allocation for more fame and sporting glory.
C. SATHASIVAM SITHERAVELLU
Seremban, Negri Sembilan
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New Straits Times
