by Wilfred Pilo
KUCHING, March 22: Minister of Youth, Sports and Entrepreneur Development, Dato Sri Abdul Karim Rahman Hamzah revealed that the cost of Malaysia Games (Sukma) 2024 would be borne by the federal and Sarawak governments.
He said the cost has always been shared by the federal government and state hosting the event, and that any event of that magnitude would be costly.
“[Division of cost] might be half-and-half, but of course, the Sarawak government will have to do a lot of the upgrading (of infrastructure), and the federal government might not be one to be involved.
“But any facility which is upgraded is good for Sarawak because I am doing a little bit of restructuring on the facilities that we have, even at the Sarawak sports complexes,” he told reporters during a press conference before launching D’Drift 2023 at DayakDaily’s office here today.
Abdul Karim who expressed his happiness that Sarawak will be hosting Sukma, pointed out that he does want to see facilities go to waste after spending so much money on any sporting event.
“I want to see the sports facilities that we have, not used to hold sporting events only, and after that, we forget about it. I want to ‘merakyatkan’ (open to community activities) all these facilities and get the public to utilise the facilities.”
Abdul Karim revealed he wanted Sarawak to model after and emulate sports facilities in countries and cities such as New Zealand, Berlin in Germany, and Florida in the USA.
“I visited all these sports facilities before. The public involvement is always there, and this is not happening in Sarawak,” he lamented.
“If we allow the public to utilise the sport facilities, it will make it (the situation) more vibrant.”
“These are the little things that I see that Sarawak is not doing. We (the government) spend so much money on facilities and to upgrade them but only use it for a period in a year. It is a waste. We want to open it (to the wider community) this time,” he said. — DayakDaily
