The Philippines must act fast to keep its athletes from seeking private and foreign support by creating a Department of Sports, Antipolo City Representative Cristina “Chiqui” Roa-Puno urged on Tuesday.
“Our world-class athletes are a source of pride and unity for us Filipinos. Isn’t it time we provided them with support that goes beyond social media likes and shares?
“Year after year, we have seen budding athletes struggle to gain access to sufficient training, while forever struggling to scrape together funding for competitions here and abroad. It is no surprise that we continue to lose them to private entities or worse, foreign patrons,” Roa-Puno lamented.
Such was the case when the Philippines lost chess grandmaster Wesley So to the United States in 2017.
“We must not forget that while we have great athletes representing our country, we have also lost so many of them due to meager government support for sports,” reminded Roa-Puno.
The substitute bill to House Bill No. 3633 authored by Roa Puno seeks to create a Department of Sports—a single, unified agency which will provide support and funding to Filipino athletes. The proposed measure will also declare a national policy for sports as “an engine for nation building, social progress, and promotion of total human development and provide the leadership, direction, organization and nationwide reach necessary for the promotion of youth participation in sports.”
The Committee on Youth and Sports has just approved the substituted bill this Wednesday morning.
Roa Puno, who currently sits as the Vice-Chairman of the Committee on Youth and Sports, is pushing for the passage of the bill. According to Roa-Puno, the Philippines is the only ASEAN member country without a cabinet-level sports department as its neighbors either have a Ministry of Youth and Sports or a Ministry of Education and Sports or a Ministry of Tourism and Sports.
“While we do have a Philippine Sports Commission, we must admit that it does not have the capability and nationwide reach to oversee all of our efforts to identify, develop, and nurture Filipinos who show potential to become world-class athletes one day.
“When I talk about the development and nurturing of athletes, I am talking about ensuring that government support is available to help them reach Olympic-level potentials—an impossible task if we will continue to ignore the Herculean challenges that Philippine sports continue to face,” Roa-Puno said.
“Sports is not just an instrument to hone champion athletes, it also has the power to teach the youth the values of self-discipline, fair play and teamwork. Our government must therefore act as a catalyst for change so that our local talent, athletes who have so much potential in them, need not look elsewhere for support and funding in order to succeed,” she added.
