Himalayan News Service

Kathmandu, July 17:

Kishor Bahadur Singh, member secretary at the National Sports Council, accused the government of not being serious towards sports while preparing the budget for the fiscal year 2005-06. “We had demanded Rs 110 million development budget and the government has allocated just Rs 31 million,” Singh told reporters at his office today. “The government’s policy towards sports has not changed yet. Sports was not given due priority while preparing the budget,” he added. “The budget has nothing new to offer and we cannot ‘go forward’ with this budget,” Singh said. The government raised the total sports budget by more than 25 per cent, but the increment in the development budget is just Rs one million. The total allocated amount to Youth and Sports Department is Rs 154.5 million, of which the National Sports Council gets 143 million. Singh informed that the total budget included Rs 102 million as general, Rs 31 as development budget and Rs 10 million for the preparation of South Asian Games (SAF Games) to be held in Sri Lanka next year. He also informed that the council had demanded Rs 110 million in development budget and the NSC got just Rs 31 million.

Last year, the government had allocated Rs 120 million to NSC, which included 30 million as development budget and Rs 90 million as general budget. The National Sports Council cannot use the general budget for infrastructural development as the amount goes to salaries alone.

“At present we have 1,000 staff members and the general budget is not even sufficient for their salaries and allowances and day-to-day expenses. We have to manage the electricity, telephone and other expenses from here and there,” said Singh. “We cannot go ahead with this budget, we have to find other fund raising schemes to run the council,” he said. “Either the government should allocate us extra budget or give us the permission to raise funds through various schemes, which we will find in due course,” he said. “We had demanded Rs 32.1 million for the preparation of South Asian Games, but the government has allocated only Rs 10 million. We have planned the preparation in three phases and with the given amount, we will announce the first phase of programmes within a week,” Singh said. “The budget for the preparation of the SA Games is insufficient and we will demand for ‘special budget’ for the games,” he said.