‘No overspending in Asiad’

The Philippine Sports Commission will only spend what is needed and necessary regarding the actual participation of the RP delegation to the 15th Asian Games in Doha, Qatar in December.

Commissioner Ritchie Garcia said the PSC does not have to spend every centavo of the P30 million it has earmarked for the RP delegation which could number more than 200 athletes and officials.

The money will be spent mostly on plane tickets costing around $800 per person, competition uniforms of the athletes and coaches, parade uniforms and allowances of each delegation member.

Garcia said if the final computation does not reach P30 million, the extra money could be used by the PSC for the local and overseas training of the athletes.

"There are other ways to use the extra money. But we are not going to spend them by simply increasing the number of the athletes that will represent our country," he said.

"If we are going to spend a little over $1,000 per athlete, you don’t use that as a gauge on how many athletes we can send by spending P30 million," said Garcia.

So far, 129 athletes from 23 sports have passed the criteria set by the Asian Games task force headed by athletics chief Go Teng Kok. He said the list should be finalized this coming week.

Go is scheduled to meet with the different NSAs (national sports associations) tomorrow regarding the possible inclusion of additional athletes.

"But it doesn’t mean that anybody can go. They have to justify it. Besides, we should not spend all the P30 million. We can use some of the money for the training or if some team sports qualify," he said.