Games budget set at Rp 101b

JAKARTA (JP): SEA Games consortium chairman Bambang Trihatmodjo said yesterday the budget for the Games would not increase again.

At the Senayan shooting range, Bambang said: "I'm afraid we cannot tolerate any more reassessments. It's been very hard to meet the Rp 101 billion (US$42.1 million) budget."

Bambang said the Games budget could not be compared to the Rp 2 trillion budget of the last Games in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

"We'll do our best to provide funds as needed by the organizers," he said.

The consortium has already handed over Rp 30 billion of the budget to organizers to help prepare facilities for the Games here in October and train the national team.

The consortium initially offered the organizers Rp 35 billion to stage the event. But the organizers soon requested more, raising their budget to Rp 95 billion in January and to Rp 101 billion last week.

The budget excludes the cost of training the national team.

Bambang said the consortium had printed stickers three months ago requiring the public to pay fees for the Games on some bills.

Last month, fake stickers were found in East Java.

"If those stickers are phony, they didn't come from us," he said. "It's not really a problem because we are yet to distribute the stickers."

Bambang said that collections from the stickers would not burden society.

"We are not targeting the stickers at poor people," he said.

Bambang promised to give the public a clear explanation about compulsory fund raising for the Games.

The Ministry of Social Services has stopped the distribution of phony stickers in East Java.

The consortium plans to distribute 17,750,000 stickers. Sixteen million of these will require payments of Rp 1,000 each and 1,750,000 stickers will require between Rp 2,500 and Rp 50,000 each.

The National Sports Council Wismoyo Arismunandar said yesterday that he hoped Indonesia's shooters would stop Thailand scooping the medals on the range at the next Games.

Antara reported that Indonesia planned to win five shooting gold medals at the Games.

Indonesia only won two golds, three silvers and three bronzes in shooting at the last Games, while Thailand grabbed 19 golds, 12 silvers and seven bronzes. (yan)