Athlete-centric key policies taken in 56th SAI Governing Body meeting

Khel Today Bureau

New Delhi: The Sports Authority of India has announced a host of athlete centric policies at the 56th Governing Body Meeting on Wednesday. The meeting focused on the development of athletes and further strengthening of the sports ecosystem of the nation.

SAI will partner with suitable organizations to allow usage of the existing sporting infrastructure to ensure optimum utilization of the facilities across various SAI centres. This is to ensure the facilities that lie underutilized are used for sporting activities.

A special grant of Rs 25 Crore has been approved for modernising of equipments at grassroots level for grassroots level athletes across the SAI Training Centers.

A crucial decision has also been taken to create a panel of visiting specialist doctors at all SAI National Centres of Excellence. This will ensure proper and faster injury recovery for athletes. They will get immediate attention and do not have to visit hospitals for every medical need.

The recruitment rules of SAI have also been made flexible so as to allow specialists from various fields of sports – coaching, support staff, administrators etc, to be hired with ease so as to further strengthen the sports ecosystem by giving the best possible manpower support to athletes.

Extending all the best possible support to the para-athletes has always been paramount. Keeping that in mind, it has been decided to give guide runners to para athletes across all SAI training centers, where they train. The step is taken to further ensure that the Government is committed to extending the same facilities to para-athletes as able-bodied athletes and ensuring that para-athletes are provided with facilities as per their personalized requirements.

Speaking on the occasion, Sh Nisith Pramanik, Union Minister of State for Youth Affairs and Sports mentioned, “Athlete centric policies was the focus of the 56th SAI Governing Body Meeting. We ensured everything possible to be done for improving the lives of the athletes. Among the key decisions taken, it was decided to provide guide runners to para athletes across all the SAI training centres to help them train better. We also decided on providing a panel of specialized doctors across all the National Centres of Excellence to ensure proper and faster injury recovery of athletes. We also granted Rs 25 crore across all SAI Training Centres for modernisation of equipment at the grassroots level for grassroots level athletes.”