National Youth Festival called off – No reason given
The 26th National Youth Sports Festival organised and conducted by the National Youth Services Council has been abandoned due to untold reasons reports say. The four-day event was scheduled to be held from November 28 at the Mahinda Rajapaksa Stadium in Diyagama, Homagama but was called off at the eleventh hour by the organisers without a clear explanation.
As a result athletes of over 8000 Youth Clubs islandwide affiliated to the National Youth Services Council are left anguished according to reliable information.
Sources say that the organisers have not received the allocated funds to carry out the necessary arrangements of the annual event, which has been running uninterruptedly for the past 25 years. Insiders say the funds promised for this event have been drafted into politically motivated activities by the hierarchy.
The event was originally planned to be held at the D.A. Rajapaksa Stadium in Beliatta but to cut down on expenses the organisers decided to move to Diyagama, Homagama. This event is one of the biggest to be held in Sri Lanka annually besides the National Sports Festival, the National Schools Sports Festival and the Mahaweli Sports Festival.
However the first phase of this year’s National Youth Sports Festival kicked off in early November with some sports events being already conducted. Events such as marathon, cycling, volleyball, beach volleyball and track and field were planned to be held at Diyagama.
However according to an official of the National Youth Services Council, it had not been decided to completely wipe off this year’s edition of the Sports Festival. It is said that the event will be held during the first few months of 2015 but an official statement on this subject is yet to come out.
In response to an article published in our sister newspaper, the Daily Lankadeepa the National Youth Services Council has sent an official letter, explaining the reasons for not holding the event on the planned dates.
It says bringing forward the G.C.E. Ordinary Level examination, the impending weather pattern and to viably justify the talents of the participants they had to ‘postpone’ the event to a future date, which was not mentioned in the letter. When the Sunday Times attempted to contact Cabinet Minister of Youth Affairs and Skills Development, Mr. Dullas Alahapperuma to get his comment on the matter, he was unavailable due a lengthy meeting he was engaged in. Lalith Piyum Perera, the Chairman and Director General of the National Youth Services Council too was contacted but the attempts proved futile.
It is also told that the organisers of Mahaweli Sports Festival are contemplating on forgoing the event in the coming year. Reliable sources also reveal that top officials are considering a suggestion on conducting the National Sports Festival, the biggest sporting event to be held annually in Sri Lanka, biennially.
Last year, the Silver Jubilee event of the National Youth Sports Festival was held in Polonnaruwa in a grand scale promising lavish prizes for top performers. The championship was won by Kurunegala District who outdid 25 other regions competed.