Shivnarine Chanderpaul received yet another Sportsman-of-the-Year award in Guyana on Sunday evening when the National Sports Commission (NSC) held its annual awards ceremony at the Guyana International Convention Centre, Liliendaal. Collecting the award on behalf of Chanderpaul was Guyana Times /TVG 28 news anchor and sports journalist Avenash Ramzan, who won the Sports Reporter-of-the year (non print) award earlier in the evening.
However, prior to the presentation of the awards, Director of Sport Neil Kumar gave an extensive report for 2012, indication also that last Thursday a new NSC council was elected.
Kumar revealed the successes and development of all of the sports, pointing out specific achievements of the various sporting fraternities and describing the performances as “excellent”. The long-serving sport director also mentioned the continued maintenance of facilities, the ones under construction and the numerous days of interaction the Sport Ministry and the NSC conducted.
Permanent Secretary within the ministry, Alfred King pointed out that for sport to move forward, greater cohesion needs to exist among key stakeholders, indicating that government is cognisant of the role of sport in today’s society.
Sport Minister Dr Frank Anthony, during his feature address, delved into the importance of exercise in one’s daily routine while expanding on the main diseases that can result from an inactive lifestyle.
On the other hand, Anthony urged that for sportsmen and women to do well, the private sector needs to invest in sporting facilities while pointing out the need for the associations to produce their sports database.
“We plug about GY$200 million into the development of community ground and we want the people to utilise these grounds but we would like to see the private sector invest in more facilities, in the U. S., the private sector invest heavily in sport facilities and are making money because they have sport entrepreneurs, and this is something we must change and we hope to convince the private sector to contribute to sport.
“Many of the sports organisations have consistently failed to submit their information to the NSC and I would like for the NSC to publish those association on a yearly basis… we need to have the database of our athletes for each association and if an association is unable to name each athlete in its sport, then how can we move forward, we must also have the database on all the coaches, it is important,” Anthony stressed.
In addition, Anthony pointed out all the facilities being built and were built to help sport improve.
He also maintained that the Resource Centre is expected to be completed by the end of this year.
“It is important we understand the science of the sport and the resource centre will provide information, every month we plan to have one lecture on physiology, anatomy, so our people can understand the science of the sport. It is something we want to evolve into a sports institute.
“Jamaica has about 350 people in their school system and if we want to achieve, we have to start putting people in the school systems and every other system. At the stadium in the parking lot we also want to add the portable types of equipment to play basketball, but we need partners to do these things and it is hard sometimes to wait on partners,” Anthony noted.
He congratulated the awardees on their achievement and concluded by stating that things can only get better.
