Fine gesture to provide financial support to talented sportspersons hailed
TEAM HERALD
sports@herald-goa.com
PANJIM: “I am ready to raise a Sports Corpus in the ensuing 2013-14 financial budget for the benefit of talented, young, upcoming sportspersons desirous of pursuing a serious career in sports a la Goa Scholars Scheme in the education sector,” stated Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar, here, Friday.
“Give me a proposal by March 18 or 19. I will get it examined and see that it is incorporated in the next financial budget so that the needy sportspersons could avail of the scheme. We can even seek donations from the corporate sector, since these are already sponsoring promising sportspersons, some as their brand ambassadors. Sports has become a costly affair and hence it becomes a financial burden on the parents,” commented Parrikar, who was replying to Geno’s Dilip R Salgaocar as the later pointed out that there was a limit upto which the corporate sector could provide financial assistance for budding sportspersons and that there was a need for some mechanism for providing assistance to prospective medal winners.
Speaking at the 16th SJAG-Geno award function, Parrikar said that the Fund would provide a big relief to the parents. Sportspersons need to compete at a very high international level and also avail of coaching by reputed coaches. Youngsters need to be accompanied by one of their parents and as such it is a costly affair. May be we could select 10 to 15 sportspersons every year with a special committee monitoring it and taking decisions as per the rules and regulations of the scheme. Formulate the scheme properly with clear indicators and give it to me,” Parrikar told the SJAG and added that it could even be managed by a specially constituted body.
Parrikar’s announcement was greeted with a very big round of applause from the packed gathering at the function, which consisted of a large number of youngsters and their parents, many of them from chess and swimming. There was no doubt, Parrikar was intelligent enough to quickly grasp the situation, more so as some parents had already approached him earlier, privately to share their predicament on behalf of their wards who are involved at a high level of competition and winning medals and glory for the State and were finding extremely difficult to sustain the momentum.
