Quarterly funding a boon for sports fraternity in cutting bureaucratic obstacles

JUNE has always been a good month for the power-that-be to splurge on Malaysian sports.

Beginning this month, 19 National Sports Associations (NSAs) and 23 sports will enjoy greater liberties in financing their activities.

This was following the Youth and Sports Ministry’s decision to reintroduce the “empowerment” method for the NSAs to manage their financial allocations.

The funding for these NSAs will be bankrolled on a quarterly basis based on the programme agreed upon and approved by the joint committee comprising the National Sports Council (NSC) and representatives of the NSAs.

Funding athlete and coach management, performance management, development programmes and support services will be covered under the scheme.

In return for the Government’s initiatives and generosity, the NSAs’ accounts will be audited by National Sports Council (NSC)-appointed auditors, hence the signing ceremony of the Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) held last week.

A similar direct funding method was successfully executed for the Kita Juara programme from 2016 which led to Malaysia’s most successful outing at the SEA Games in Kuala Lumpur with a massive haul of 145 gold.

But this time around, under the agreement, the NSAs must open a separate account to receive direct funding and it must be open to auditing.

Through this method, NSAs no longer can complain of red tape and delayed or staggered payments.

One of the NSAs’ greatest grouses was NSC’s pay-and-claim method which involved bureaucratic process.

In many meetings between the NSAs and Sports Minister, Hannah Yeoh it was highlighted that the red tape made it difficult for them to plan.

Virtually all representatives of a cross section of the sports fraternity who participated in a workshop on core sports last year were unhappy with the staggered funding from NSC.

Hannah has delivered, now the NSAs must reciprocate.

By empowering them, the NSAs will have the luxury of time, flexibility and freedom to plan training programmes, accommodation arrangements and flights for overseas competitions.

And by opening themselves up for audit, the NSAs will be forced to practise good governance and transparency in all their financial dealings.

The NSC-appointed auditors shall check the accuracy and credibility of financial statements and administrative provisions related to the NSAs and financial accounting operations as well as to check whether the funds are used exclusively to achieve the objectives set out in the programme.

This was unlike the first MOA between NSC and the NSAs introduced in 2005.

When the Cabinet Committee for Sports Development chaired by the then Deputy Prime Minister approved a budget of RM30 million to develop eight core sports namely aquatics (diving and swimming), athletics, badminton, bowling, football, gymnastics, hockey and squash, an MOA was signed between NSC and the eight associations.

The implementation of the programme came directly under the control of the Steering Committee for Core Sports which was headed by Tan Sri Noordin Hassan, with a total of 366 centres and 636 coaches employed for the eight sports under this programme.

While hockey and badminton were the biggest recipients of the funding with RM4.5 million and RM3.14 million approved respectively, there were underlying issues that merely sowed the deep mistrust between the Government agency and the non-governmental associations.

Back to 2024, for a start, 19 sports will enjoy the quarterly funding direct to the newly-set up bank account.

They are aquatics, archery, athletics, badminton, boxing, cycling, gymnastics, hockey, karate, ping pong, sailing, sepak takraw, shooting, silat, squash, taekwondo, tenpin bowling, weightlifting and wushu.

The initiative will expand to include sports expected to feature in the upcoming SEA Games in Bangkok and the 2027 edition supposed to be held in Malaysia.

For the sports family which had been forced to accept programmes that were watered down or scrapped altogether due to budget issues for the past five years or so, the quarterly funding will ease their financial burden as they bid to be self-sustaining.

No more complains after this, one might assume.