Athletic officials pushed upgrade skills
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) is seeking to spur the athletics development in southeast Asia through a seminar on administrative skills, which began here on Friday.
The four-day seminar on the basic administration and athletics organization is being hosted by the Regional Development Center (RDC) Jakarta.
Fourteen countries, including those from the south Asian region, participated in the seminar at the Century Hotel.
The participating countries are Bangladesh, Brunei Darussalam, Bhutan, Cambodia, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Thailand.
"We are trying to instill more administrative skills for the officials of the athletics federations in the region as well as equip them with proper and clear knowledge about the management of the organization," Kata Farkas, IAAF's Member Services Officer, told The Jakarta Post after the official opening of the seminar.
Farkas, who was a keynote speaker along with Maurice Nicholas, her compatriot from the Asian Athletics Association (AAA), said that she was very optimistic about the prospects of track and field development in the region.
She called on the RDC to further step up its development efforts in the organization of recommendable coaching clinics.
"Theoretically, if the RDC can organize a good coaching education, logically and obviously the athletic performance will subsequently be pushed to a higher level," she said.
RDC Jakarta supervises 19 countries, leaving Afghanistan, India, Laos, Pakistan, Vietnam as the only absentees from the seminar.
Indonesia has four participants in the seminar, including Tigor Tanjung, the secretary-general of the Indonesian Athletics Association (PASI).
RDC Jakarta Director Ria Lumintuarso pointed out the need to improve the ability in managing the organization for the benefit of the athletics development in their respective countries.
"Hopefully, the participants can make the best of their presence and apply their upgraded knowledge when they arrive back home," he said.
Farkas, whose main task is to supervise all nine RDCs in the world, said that IAAF had allocated US$9 million annually for development.
The money is spent in organizing competitions, sport-specific seminars of its own and in the promotional campaign of the sport through RDCs.
The seminar is the third clinic RDC Jakarta has hosted in four months. The last two meetings were on physiotherapy and the steeplechase respectively.