– Major mutli-discipline plans to be rolled out

HUNDREDS of the nation’s children gathered at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre on Saturday to be a part of President Mohamed Irfaan Ali’s vision of enhancing youth development through sport.
The government led by President Ali under his ‘one Guyana’ banner, handed out thousands of sports gear worth millions of dollars for the nation’s budding male and female cricketers.

Dr Ali says the goal is to create an eco-system that will develop Guyana and West Indies players.
“Our focus is to not only build Guyana’s premier facilities but a premier academy for cricketers all across the region. We want to be known to have an academy that provides the conditions, for the development of the best fast bowlers, world class spinners and batsman who can bat spin and pace bowling,” the President said.

The Guyanese leader also announced that they have enlisted Sir Clive Lloyd to be in charge of the cricket academies in the country.
The Head of State says this is just the beginning as similar initiatives will be launched for other sports, adding “So outside of cricket, we are set to launch in the coming week’s specific initiatives for football, basketball, table tennis, volleyball, badminton and squash. Those are the first set of sports, the next set of sporting disciplines that we are going to launch specific initiatives for in key areas.”

He added, “We will build multi-purpose tarmacs and multi-purpose facilities in which badminton, basketball, table tennis, volleyball, squash could be played and we will also give out equipment to support those sporting disciplines across the country.”
Student athletes from all across Guyana were present to receive the gear.

The move is one of several measures by the government to boost sports by providing an enabling environment for the young people from around the country.

Another such measure was the lifting of value added tax on sport equipment in January of this year.
Prime Minister Mark Phillips says the government is planting the seed for future cricketing success, saying, “What we have done here today (Saturday) is strategy in action, this initiative by his Excellency will bear fruit not necessarily tomorrow but today the 10th of august 2024, mark that date, the 10 of august 2034 by then you will see the results.”
Meanwhile, Sport Minister Charles Ramson Jr in giving opening remarks outlined the significance of the huge investment.

“This investment that President Ali is making in you, is so that you can grow and prosper and blossom into productive citizens of the country and potentially world class elite athletes, so you could represent Guyana and take our name and nationality, take our brand to the world stage and show the world we are a proud nation capable of beating the world.”

Also present during yesterday morning’s activity was Senior Minister in the Office of the President with responsibility for Finance, Dr Ashni Singh, who articulated that this move is the single largest investment in youth cricket in the country’s history.

“So, to you boys and girls, I want to say to you, there has never been a better to be a young sports person or a young cricketer. With a fraction of these facilities, Guyana was able to produce some of the world’s best cricketers and so one can only dare to imagine what we can produce with the kind of facilities we enjoy now and the investment we are making.”

Several other government officials, Guyana Cricket Board persons and national stakeholders were present at the simple handing over ceremony.