NSA 'flops' face budget cuts - Garcia

MANILA, Philippines - The Philippine Sports Commission will start evaluating the performances of all the national sports associations following a disastrous sixth place finish in the 26th Southeast Asian Games ending today in Palembang and Jakarta, Indonesia.

PSC chair Richie Garcia, back in Manila after helping oversee the country’s participation in the biennial meet, said the government sports funding agency will review the performances of each NSA, particularly those who had failed to deliver in the Games.

The sixth place effort tied the country’s worst finish in 2007 in Thailand.

“We will start to review the performance of the NSAs and classify them under performing and non-performing,” Garcia told The STAR.

Garcia said the PSC will reward the NSAs that performed well in Indonesia with more funding starting next year while subjecting those who didn’t perform and miserably failed to budget cuts – or worse, an outright removal of funding.

“We will start to review their budget for next year and make adjustments based on how they performed,” said Garcia.

For athletes, Garcia said the medal winners will remain in Class A while those who failed will be declassified to lower classes or be totally removed from the national training pool receiving monthly allowances and free dormitories.

“Medalists who failed to win will be non-medalists and vice versa,” he said.

At press time, the Phl is doomed at sixth place with a 36-55-76 (gold-silver-bronze) behind host Indonesia (168-145-133), Thailand (105-92-118), Vietnam (95-90-100), Malaysia (55-47-74) and Singapore (42-45-73) and way ahead of Myanmar (16-27-34), Laos (9-12-36), Cambodia (4-11-23), Timor Leste (1-1-6) and Brunei (0-4-7).

The sixth place finish was the worst by the Phl, which joined the multi-sports meet in 1977, in the history of the Games since finishing the same in the 2007 edition in Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand where the country hauled 41-91-96 medals.