“Change is Coming”. That was the battle cry when Mayor Rody Duterte ran for President.
Now that he is President, “Change must come”, to borrow the words of Bayan Muna representative Carlos Zarate. And I believe that should happen in the “DepEd Sports Republic”.
For those familiar with “Ins and Outs” of the Education Department, for many, many years, it has functioned as an entirely different Republic when it comes to sports specially in running the Palarong Pambansa.
I can’t blame them. Long before the creation of the Philippine Sports Commission in 1990, the Palarong Pambansa has been organized years and years before the PSC. It used to be known as MECS or the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports, then DECS, “D” for the Department, until it just became DepEd for short. And they take care in running the Palaro.
You may presume that renaming it to DepEd would simply spell that they will focus on educating our students, focus all its energies there, and what happened to Sports? Well, you may think that its function must go to the PSC and the Philippine Olympic Committee. But it has not.
I remember the proposal of creating the Philippine Sports Authority(PSA) to centralize the sports development in the country but this did not prosper and has remained proposal.
Reviving the plan to create a PSA will simply centralize sports development and manned by the sports experts, whose only job is purely sports development.
I’m not saying that there are no competent sports officials in the DepEd because there are. What I’m pointing out is that, it is about high time to deload our teachers of their roles in sports development.
There should be a PSA, a sports department, purely focused on revolutionizing sports development in the country, of course, with the help of DepEd sports officials and the various National Sports Associations, recognized by their International Federations.
As to the “DepEd Sports Republic”, focusing on excellence in academics and leaving sports activities to the PSA will give justice, believe me, to the student-athletes, accredited coaches and officials.
“Change must come”. This is why I like the words used by Congressman Zarate who said it in the context that everyone must work together to improve the situation in the country.
I would love to see that “Change must come” too in the country’s sports development program.
Or else, we will still read reports of athletes sleeping on cartons, laid on cold concrete floors. Goodness gracious, I hope they are sleeping well too at night and not be bothered by mosquitoes.
Probably, PSC officials like commissioner Charles Maxey and chairman William “Butch” Ramirez can join and sympathize with the athletes by sleeping on cartons too.
But what about DepEd sports officials?
So, “Change must come” gyud!
