-Says Minister Anthony
Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport, Dr. Frank Anthony, says the Guyana Rugby Football Union (GRFU) did not adhere to protocol by informing his ministry of the success of the national men and women’s rugby Sevens sides at the recent North American and Caribbean Rugby Association tournament in Mexico but left it up to news reports for his ministry to be informed.
The Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport has been criticized by the media for not even offering congratulatory messages to the GRFU and the teams.
It was the second title triumph for the women’s team and the fourth consecutive title triumph for the men’s team who will represent the region at the 2010 Commonwealth Games in India alongside Canada.
According to Dr. Anthony it was just a simple matter of protocol on the part of the GRFU.
“When teams come back from their sojourn overseas we feel that at least the ministry should be informed in a timely manner so that we can give the necessary accolades,” he explained.
“Very often we would read two or three days after the teams would have returned in the press about their exploits abroad and I think we need to correct that situation,” Dr. Anthony added.
Dr. Anthony said he believes that win or lose it was very important that the ministry be informed of a team’s performance so that they can keep a record of what they have been doing.
“I think we want to be informed in an official position. One can read a lot of things in the papers but I think a basic courtesy would entail that we are officially informed by the association. You know the ironic thing is that when the teams are going, we normally get requests for tax waivers and so forth but when they come back, we don’t know and I think with a little bit of effort we can correct it,” said Dr. Anthony.
Meanwhile the ministry will meet with the various sports associations every Friday, at the Cliff Anderson Sports Hall.
“We might not be able to fix all the problems, I am very certain of that. We don’t have all the resources to do everything that everybody wants. The least we can do is get a clear understanding of what are their plans and what they want to do and how they can collaborate with us,” he said.
He said that his ministry feels strongly about the idea of community sports and about more sports happening in schools.
“Perhaps if we could work along with them to have school sports more formally established for almost all the disciplines, then we are willing to sponsor or work with them to do some activity in the schools.”
