Latest update February 17th, 2025 9:42 PM
Jan 08, 2017 Sports
By Edison Jefford
The failure of the Athletics Association of Guyana (AAG) to fully capitalise on an Olympic, and Pan
American Games’ Training Grant that the Guyana Olympic Association (GOA) received last year undermines its fundamental role to develop the sport and its athletes.
According to the GOA’s Financial Statements for 2016 that was presented at its Annual General Meeting and Elections last December, the local Olympic body received $41,300,000 as an Olympic and Pan Am Training Grant.
However, in the statement, only $3,968,000 was expended. The statement did not specify who benefited from this expended sum and for what purpose. But this is an aspect of the presentation that caught the attention of people who felt that the AAG would have raised questions over this revelation.
The monies expended from this grant according to the statement means that a remaining balance of $37,332,000 should be part of the association’s total surplus; the $3,968,000 expenditure was explicitly itemised under a list of Coaching/Training Programmes, which amounted to some $21,757,621.
It was not clear whether the Olympic/Pan Am Training Grant covered the other expenditure, but what was listed specifically as Pan Am and Training Expenses was $3,968,000 that suggest that only that sum was expended from the $41,300,000 grant.
It must be noted that the athletics association is a main stakeholder of the GOA because it is the only sport that qualifies for the Olympic Games. In the context of this fact, President of the AAG, Aubrey Hutson nominated K. A. Juman Yassin for a sixth consecutive term to be at the helm of the Olympic body.
General Secretary of the Guyana Table Tennis Association (GTTA), Linden Johnson seconded the nomination that embedded Yassin into the GOA Presidency (unopposed) after an already 20-year plus tenure as head of the association.
Apart from funding its participation in the Olympic Games last year, it would be interesting to know how the AAG has benefitted from the GOA last year to fully assess if it is maximising its obviously close, incestuous relationship with the Olympic association.
What the GOA’s Financial Statement suggests is that the AAG did not access funds for domestic programmes in any substantial way. This fact is a misrepresentation and caricature of the sport and its athletes. If monies come to the GOA for training, then as a uniquely positioned national association, it is mandatory for the AAG to access that funding for its rightful purpose.
The inaccessibility to this funding for athletes’ training and development demonstrates either of two realities. It is either the athletics association lacks an ability to develop programmes that will attract the attention of such a fund or it is simply not interested in this aspect of its function.
Either way, this fact is an indictment of the leadership of the AAG because in plain terms it could mean that representation was not made on behalf of athletes and clubs, who desperately are in need of such financial assistance.
To have this grant come to the GOA for such a purpose as training and returned with less than 10 percent spent is grossly negligible and irresponsible from a sport that often finds itself in need of financial support. And this is putting it mildly. Maybe depraved is a better description.
Perhaps the AAG is so fixated on the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) grant it receives that it treats the GOA funding with no importance. Either way, this fact threatens the development of the association’s main constitutions, which are the clubs and athletes.
This is not the kind of representation they deserve, especially given the intimacy of the AAG and GOA. This relationship obviously does not produce appropriate results, but there has never been any divorce. Instead, there was a strengthening of the relationship between them at the Elections. Maybe it has been blissful, but it remains publicly repulsive.
Feb 17, 2025
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