Minister of Sports Says Sports Needs More Financing

Rodwell Ferguson

When we caught up with the Minister of Sports on Thursday night he was asked about his ministry’s overall plans to develop sports in Belize. Minister Ferguson responded, saying that a lack of sufficient finance has always been a hurdle in the development of sports in Belize. He told us about discussions he has been having with the National Sports Council to raise the funds needed to provide more support to athletes.

Rodwell Ferguson, Minister of Sports

“As the National Sports Council is a quasi-government so once you become a quasi-government, and once you become a quasi-government, the government expects you to raise funds on your own to balance off what the government gives to you. It is difficult because when our athletes go to play on any pitch nobody wants to continue to anything because they feel like it is a privilege and they are right. So I sat down a couple weeks ago and I came up with some thoughts. I said we have all these facilities across the country and we can figure out how we can become income generating. Right now we are working on several of them to figure out how we can get a loan and borrow funds and help them to create their own income and help and assist the athletes in this country. Right now the Ministry of Infrastructure engineers is putting a plan together to figure how we can raise funds to get a loan from the bank and improve them.”