Salleh Sani
KUCHING: Sarawak Taekwondo Association (WTF) president Salleh Sani has expressed disappointment with the Sarawak State Sports Council (MSNS) on “inappropriate arrangements” pertaining to the training allowance of their athletes.
In a press statement, he made reference to the 2016 Sukma when the state taekwondo team did very well in bagging eight gold medals.
“Yet, our 11 athletes who are eligible and entitled to receive a monthly training allowance (from Sept 2016 till Sukma 2018) from MSNS have yet to receive any to date,” he said.
According to Salleh, they had written to MSNS informing that the training allowance letters prepared by MSNS for the athletes were found to be incomplete with missing attachments.
“This has caused inconveniences and caused our athletes’ parents/guardians to delay their consideration.The mentioned attachments which are supposed to be re-issued to our athletes also came to nothing,” he complained.
“This might be a ‘smaller matter’ to some of them in MSNS … We are also one of the foremost active sports associations in the state. Sadly, we have been treated in such ‘customary selective actions’ by MSNS recently!,” the statement continued.
The association concluded by urging the MSNS to take a serious view of the matter as “it might affect the feelings of those athletes who are training hard to prepare for the 2017 SEA Games and 2018 Sukma.”
Currently, six state taekwondo athletes have been called up for national centralised training in Kuala Lumpur to prepare for the SEA Games and are due to undergo intensive training in South Korea from early January.