(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) Guyana’s Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport, Honourable Dr. Frank Anthony has stated that despite the obvious benefits of sport and physical activity, the Region was still not taking sport seriously.
Speaking on Tuesday, at the opening ceremony of the 17th Special Meeting of the Caribbean Community’s (CARICOM) Council for Human and Social Development (COHSOD) on Sport, the Minister said that not enough was being invested in it and extra lessons had robbed Caribbean children of play time.
Minister Anthony told his audience of colleague Ministers and Directors of Sports as well as other key stakeholders that countries, which embraced physical activity and sport as part of their culture, had boosted their social capital and gained improvement in health and productivity; reduction in juvenile crime and delinquency rates; and reduction in medical costs.
He added that at the individual level, sports had aided in character building; cognitive performance, academic excellence, discipline and team building.
“Yet, despite these obvious benefits,” the Minister lamented, “sports in many parts of the Region is still not treated seriously, and consequently investment in sports have been lagging.”
One of the many issues subjected to intense debate at the two-day COHSOD Meeting in Georgetown, Guyana is that of strengthening physical education in schools.
According to Minister Anthony, if the values of physical fitness were not entrenched during the school years, the Region should brace itself for an obesity epidemic.
Currently, the WHO Health Statistics 2012 Report, which includes data from 194 countries, indicates that the highest obesity levels are in the region of the Americas, with 26 per cent of adults suffering from obesity and a widening margin of childhood obesity. Dr Anthony said that the illnesses and deaths caused by obesity were already taking a toll on the health care systems of the Caribbean.
His solution is that we “take bold steps in implementing a strong school-based physical education program across the region.” He also recommended that CARICOM conduct what he called an “Active People Survey” to benchmark the level of physical activity in the Region. This, he said, would also ensure that effective monitoring and evaluation was done with the programmes we implement.
The Guyana Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport further called for greater synergies between regional governments and regional sporting bodies.
“In the age of transparency, democracy and accountability, we must insist that these bodies have good governance structures that represent the ethos of the Caribbean people,” the Minister said.
He made a case for the development of allied industries to increase economic benefits from sports. Minister Anthony thought it was a good idea to create a regional mechanism that enabled the Caribbean to bid collectively to host major sporting competitions: “This approach will make it affordable for the region rather than a burden for a single Member State,” he explained.
The Minister concluded by advocating for a strong mechanism to facilitate the manufacturing of sports equipment and clothing that he said would foster job creation within the Region.
