A lack of young athletes on the Executive Yuan’s Sports Development Committee shows that the government is not serious about undertaking comprehensive sports reform, Taiwan People’s Party Legislator Andy Chiu (邱臣遠) said yesterday.
The committee was established on July 12, 2016, in accordance with pledges made by President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) during the preceding presidential election, Chiu said, adding that the Sports Administration and other agencies are obligated to implement sports policies stipulated by the committee.
However, the Executive Yuan’s Web site shows that the average age of the committee members who were recruited from the private sector in 2016 was 61.6, he said.
Taiwanese tennis player Lu Yen-hsun (盧彥勳), at 33, was the only active professional athlete on the committee at the time, he added.
Even after the committee recruited Lu, weightlifter Kuo Hsin-chun (郭婞淳) and badminton player Tai Tzu-ying (戴資穎), the average age of the committee only fell to 60.3 in 2018, Chiu said.
The composition of the committee showed a serious generational imbalance, given that the average age of Taiwan’s Olympic medalists in 2012, 2016 and this year was 24, he said.
The last committee meeting was held on Dec. 17, 2019, showing that it has not functioned for more than 18 months, he said.
While the terms of the committee members selected in 2018 expired on July 11 last year, the Executive Yuan has yet to nominate new members, Chiu said, adding that such a delay cannot possibly meet the expectations of younger generations.
“Tsai promised during her meeting with athletes competing in the 2017 Summer Universiade in Taipei that the budget allocated for sports development would double in eight years. However, we saw a steady decline in the budget allocated to the Sports Administration in the past five years,” he added.
That the Sports Administration arranged Olympic athletes to sit in economy class during their flight to Tokyo last month while government officials sat in business class showed that the administration also has problems in executing the policy, Chiu said.
The Executive Yuan should seriously consider whether the Sports Development Committee should cease its operations, he said, adding that if the committee continues to exist, it should recruit more young athletes and be free from any political interference.
The Sports Administration said that its funding came from the Executive Yuan, the Sports Development Fund and the Forward-looking Infrastructure Development Program, which has increased from about NT$8 billion (US$287.450 million at the current exchange rate) in 2016 to NT$13.4 billion this year.
The budget in 2016 did not include a special budget of NT$1.678 billion that was appropriated to host the Universiade, it said.
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