Minister Harin affirms the new sports law would iron out corruption and politics

Minister of Sports Harin Fernando that he wants to soon implement a new sports law which would be aimed at ironing out the ongoing internal politics and corruptions within the sports associations in the country. He said that he had learnt that many of the sports associations are entangled with internal conflicts, abuse of power and financial corruptions which is a result of the prevailing system and need to be addressed with a stricter sports law.

“The draft has been already made and is under discussion and consultations by various specialists. First of all, we will get the approval from the Cabinet and then submit it to the Parliament” said the ministers indicating the first sports body to be touched with the new law would be Sri Lanka cricket.

“I think all cricket problems will be easily sorted out soon with this. We plan to make big changes at Sri Lanka Cricket after the elections.” said the sports minister who was very critical about the results shown by the cricket head coach Chandika Hathurusinghe saying that he had not delivered in relation to the salary and the perks he had been enjoying from the SLC.

Apart from cricket, the sports minister also talked about the other sports bodies such as Netball, Badminton, Hockey and Swimming who had asked to have their AGMs as soon as possible. The minister said as much as 28 sports bodies are due to hold their elections this year and he never wanted Interim committee in place for any of these associations. “The issue of these democratically elected administrations is that it is the same crowd who want to be at the helm always and after a while, they do little to develop the sport they administer. I hope that the new legislation will give an opportunity to newcomers as well in a routine basis” said the minister.

Minister Harin Fernando also expressed his determination to take forward the project of building a High Altitude Training Centre in Nuwara Eliya. “The project plan has already been completed by the former sports minister and we would get it done as soon as possible as this is going to be Asia’s third of this kind after Japan and China” affirmed the sports minister.

“We will handover a complete playground to Kilinochchi sports enthusiasts next March. We hope that this would be a boost for the youth in the north to engage more in sports activities to make their representation at the national level” explained the minister, who aimed to build synthetic track each for every province in the country.

Courtesy : Srilankasports .com