PSC to give rewards to Paragames heroes

MANILA, Philippines - The Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) will also reward Filipino differently-abled athletes for their hard work and medal-winning performances in the sixth ASEAN Paragames that ended last week in Solo, Indonesia.

The Pinoy bets brought home 23 gold medals, the same number of silvers, and 18 bronzes to finish fifth overall behind Thailand (126-96-73), Indonesia (113-108-89), Malaysia (51-36- 45) and Vietnam (44-44-72) in the 10-day competitions featuring 11 sports.

“They (Paragames medalists) will get incentives from us,” said PSC chairman Richie Garcia, whose agency released cash incentives totaling P8.06 million to medalists in the Southeast Asian Games last week.

The PSC is actually not obligated by law to award cash bonuses to Paragames achievers as the biennel event for differently-abled athletes is not covered by RA 9064 or the “Sports Benefits and Incentives Act of 2001.”

But the commission has taken it upon itself to hand out windfalls to Paragames medalists as well, though not as substantial as what the SEAG winners take as per RA 9064.

“We’ll check how much they were given (by the PSC board) before. They are not covered by 9064 but the PSC will surely give them,” assured Garcia.

In the last Paragames in 2009 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, the PSC handed out P15,000 for the gold medalist, while P10,000 went to the silver earner and P5,000 was given to the bronze winner.

Expected to get a big chunk of the incentives are bets from swimming, who delivered seven golds, three silvers and one bronze, led by triple gold medalist and record-breaker Ernie Gawilan.

There’s no target date yet for the awarding of the bonuses for the mesdal-winning differently-abled athletes.