The Minister of Youth & Sports Datuk Shabery Cheek is known to have questioned the National Sports Associations for their internal squabbles, more recently the Badminton Association of Malaysia.
However the Honourable Minister was put in a fix when trouble brewed at the recent NSC Board meeting where current NSC Director General Dato Zolkples Embong questioned the entire program of the Talent ID program under the care of for NSC DG and current National Sports Institute Director General Dato Dr. Ramlan Abdul Aziz.
Zolkples launched an attack after gaining information from some NSI officials on the cost effectiveness of the Talent ID Program. It is believed that Zol was peeved that although more then RM1 million was spent, not many promising athletes were discovered by the program spearheaded by NSI.
Ramlan did not take the criticism sitting down and put forward his points defending the program. But it shows that while the Minister was minding the business of other national sports associations, he was having difficulty dousing the fire in his own chalet ( pardon the pun).
So really, the cold war between the NSC and NSI has not ended and are we going to see a continuity over the months to come.
Shabery, do the right thing, get Zol and Ramlan to sit together and iron out their differences, get rid of the trouble makers within both the bodies and move on. The bottom line is both must shape up or ship out.
A replacement is already there, upon his return from UK this June, so Shabery get cracking please.
And yes while you are at it Sir, it was nothing new that you announced with regards to the RM2,000 allowance for the Olympics as it was in place since 2004 already.
As for the staging of Sukma every year, well what can we say other then the fact your Ministry wants to usurp the power of every national sports association and turn NSC from being a body to look into high performance sports to a travel and event management company.
And before I forget Sir, hosting Sukma costs money right? So how come suddenly the NSC has funds to do this but questions spending just over a million to test some 70,000 kids nationwide?
