BENGUET province is seeking possible changes in giving cash incentives to athletes.
Even with the province generating more medals in regional and national sports competition, Benguet will soon reduce financial assistance to athletes due to a scanty budget.
Provincial Sports Development officer Mark Monang told Sun.Star the province may propose to lessen the cash given to winning athletes and coaches once the resolution will be submitted for review and conceivable approval in the provincial council.
“We would really like to adjust the budget sa pagbibigay ng mga cash incentives sa athletes and coaches,” Monang said.
According to Monang, the motion is being pushed to come up with solutions to the scarcity of funds to cover payrolls for the athletes representing the province.
“We know the coaches and athletes are aware of the provincial law mandating the local government to provide cash incentives, but with the lack of funds, we better cut it down a little bit unless we want to go down with a lot of debts to all of them,” Monang added.
According to the provincial law, each athletes will receive P5,000, P3,000, and P1,000 for gold, silver, and bronze medals accordingly while coaches will be given P2,000, P1,500, and P800 respectively for national competitions.
According to Monang, they will propose to cut down the gold medal incentive for the athlete to P2,500 and so on as well as to the coaches.
He added with the proposed plan, the local government can sustain the cash incentive program.
“Masyado kasing mataas ang current allotted incentive for each medal and we totally miss out if ever we cannot provide all the athletes and coaches the same as mandated,” Monang said.
Monang said all current cash incentives still depend on the allocated provincial budget.
He said many of the athletes and coaches who fail to receive the promised amount had cast doubts on the provincial government.
“This is just to correct a few errors since when we give them a little than what is expected, sasama rin ang loob nila and we don’t want that to happen regularly,” Monang added.