Serious up and Man-up! Government officials

THE GLARING NONCHALANCE and trivializing of matters pertinent to sports here in St Vincent and the Grenadines by our governmental arms and agencies, continue to be a bug bear and national hindrance.

The latest episode in the series is the foot dragging on providing the prerequisites for the certification of the track at Diamond, the Sir Vincent Beache Stadium as it is sometimes referred to.

As it is, successive ministers with responsibility for Sports within the Cabinet of St Vincent and the Grenadines, have neglected to respond and provide the necessary mechanisms to facilitate the certification.

With the track owned by the government, they are the ones who are responsible for navigating the channels to have it validated and approved with the appropriate certification.

Are such actions inherent on the government’s apparatus, which gives the outward impression that they care less about sports? Or are they naïve or ignorant to the magnitude of having an uncertified synthetic track in use?

Either way, it does not speak well of the importance of track and field to St Vincent and the Grenadines, neither adherence to policies and procedures from a governmental standpoint.

A simple correspondence seems like a mountainous and arduous climb that will ensure that the synthetic track’s specifications are checked and verified.

A requirement from World Athletics, the governing body for Track and Field, mandates testing of all implements and equipment periodically, in most cases, every four years.

In addition, ascertaining that there are no imperfections and surface unevenness, and a check on layer thickness, shock absorption and vertical deformation, friction, tensile properties, colour loss and drainage, are also on the check list.

Therefore, when St Vincent and the Grenadines and others’ synthetic track is uncertified, many times, records will not be recognized as official.

This will put our local athletes in a disadvantageous position, as qualification standards cannot be met.

Maybe, just may be, the non- certification of

the track could be a factor which was foremost in the minds of our overseasbased athletes, who opted not to attend this weekend’s Wendell Hercules National Championships.

Relatedly, another of the drawbacks is that regional or international athletes would not dare come here to compete, knowing that their performance will not be officially documented.

Beyond that, St Vincent and the Grenadines may face sanctions from the governing organisations of the sport. Hopefully, the latter does not come to fruition and the relevant authorities have started to act expeditiously on getting the paperwork and other procedural matters in place to get our track endorsed and fit for competitions.

This lethargic way of doing things should be no more, as it does not reflect well as a government nor as a people since such undertakings are considered basic.

Expectantly, this should be the first and lone occasion that such tardiness will be allowed to happen, and all concerned would have learned from this procrastination and undertake to do better in all respects.

It is time for government officials to ‘serious- up’ and ‘man-up’ in all aspects of national development, especially in sports here in St Vincent and the Grenadines.