NSC director-general Shapawi Ismail said the restructuring exercise was carried out due to the current state of the country’s economy, which was affected by the Covid-19 pandemic as well as the recent natural disaster.
“There is a slight reduction in allowances, more justified to their current or best performance, and this is fairer and commensurate with the medals won,” he said at a press conference today.
According to him, the gold medallists of the SEA Games and the Asean Para Games will receive an allowance of RM2,000 while the silver and bronze medallists will receive RM800.
Training allowance for athletes who won medals at Asian Games/Asian Para Games and the Commonwealth Games was the same, with the gold medallists getting RM4,500 followed by RM4,000 (silver) and RM3,500 (bronze) while RM7,500 would await the gold medallist of Olympic/Paralympic Games followed by RM7,000 (silver) and RM6,000 (bronze).
Apart from that, athletes who do not get a medal but are still listed in the NSC training programmes will get RM800 while the backup athletes will receive RM500.
Shapawi explained that the total training allowance did not include accommodation, food and drinks, training and training infrastructure provided to athletes.
A 2019 review of allowances saw medal winners at the Olympic/Paralympic Games receiving RM7,500, followed by athletes who won medals at the Asian Games/Asian Para Games receiving RM6,000, the Commonwealth Games receiving RM3,500 and the SEA Games/Asean Para Games receiving RM2,000.
Asked whether the athletes were aware of the review, he said they understood the current situation in the country which caused the restructuring.
Meanwhile, Shapawi said the allowance was part of the RM27.5 million allocation given to NSC to provide training programmes to senior athletes, coaches and para-athletes who are competing in three major sporting events this year.
NSC have identified 248 able-bodied athletes and 45 para-athletes for this year’s training programme while the backup training programme has 178 able-bodied athletes and 22 para-athletes.
“We have our mission for the SEA Games in Hanoi this May followed by the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham in July and the Asian Games in Hangzhou in September,” he said.
“This programme will be skewed towards the Games. We know we need the allocation that we got before and are very grateful to the government for providing it.”