Fatimah looking at the working paper for the 19th Sopma Sarawak 2016 as Albert (fifth left) and Welfare Department director Abang Shamsuddin Abang Seruji (second right) look on.
KUCHING: Sarawak is all set to host for the first time the Malaysian Sports for the Deaf (Sopma).
The 19th edition of Sopma will be held here next year.
Admitting that it would not be easy to host the event, Welfare, Women, Family Development Minister Datuk Fatimah Abdullah, however, said the government would give its fullest support to Sarawak Society for the Deaf to make it a success.
“It is going to be very challenging for us but we will give them our full support, same like other sports meet such as Sukma (Malaysian Games) or Paralympics.
“We don’t differentiate the deaf because they are also like any other ordinary member of the society just that they have hearing problem.
“Otherwise they are physically normal just like any one of us so there is no reason why we should not support them so that they can participate in sports like other normal people,” she said.
She told reporters this after receiving a courtesy call by a delegation from the society led by their president Albert Wong and the event organiser.
“We know that to the host such meet is going to be the biggest challenge for us because we need to get a pool of people who have at least basic knowledge of sign language.
“Firstly we need good coaches to train our own athletes but the problem is how to communicate if the coaches don’t even know about sign language.
“So what we will do is to try to get translators for the coaches,” she said.
The other big challenge, she added, is to find at least 600 volunteers to help during the event.
“Again these volunteers will also be given three months basic training in sign language because what we fear is communication breakdown between the athletes and officials,” she pointed out.
She said Sarawak Society for the Deaf under the leadership of Albert Wong, which has about 300 registered members to date, was very positive and enthusiastic about the meet and targeted to finish as top three.
“In the last meet which was held in Melaka last year Sarawak team collected a total of nine medals and also finished in the ninth spot but this time they are so positive that they can finish in top three.
“A total of 16 teams will be participating in 19th Sopma Sarawak 2016, including Singapore and Brunei Darussalam,” she informed.
On the society’s membership, Fatimah said so far only 300 of the estimated 1,000 persons with hearing impairment who had been traced by the Welfare Department throughout the state had registered with the society.
“We believe many people out there who have hearing problem are still undetected and as what we are doing for other disabilities we have started with our aggressive drive to register them through our outreach programme.
“We are doing the best we can because we don’t want to leave out any underprivileged member of the society but it takes time because there are so many places for us to visit,” she explained.