Why discriminate Paralympic winners?

PETALING JAYA: MCA parliamentarian for Pandan Ong Tee Keat has questioned the discriminative and ‘unfair’ reward system for disabled athletes and is planning to raise the issue in Parliament soon.

Ong said he would devote a portion of his debate speech on Budget 2013 to question the system, which offers a lucrative one-off cash reward to Olympics medalists but not to their Paralympics counterparts.

Under the Athlete Incentive Scheme (Shakam), gold medal winners at the Olympics received a one-off RM1 million payment while silver and bronze medal winners receive RM300,000 and RM100,000 respectively.
This was in stark contrast to Paralympic gold medal winners who received RM300,000 while silver and bronze medal winners get RM200,000 and RM100,000 respectively.

“Today, despite them winning medals, there is still a world of differences in terms of the treatments they got as compared to Lee Chong Wei or Pandelela (Rinong).

“Disabled athletes fork out double efforts to take part in Paralympics, they should be given equal shares of reward,” Ong said in a video clip posted on his YouTube channel.

When contacted by FMT, Ong also disagreed with Sport Minister Ahmad Shabery Cheek’s recent remark that the reward gap was due to the Paralympics games’ structure, where multiple sub-categories are found under a category such as 100 meter sprint.

He said the ministry should take into account the physical challenges the disabled athletes need to endure and the jobs they may forgo to take part in the trainings.

Hence, he urged the ministry to come out with a mechanism that would ensure disabled athletes’ job security.
“The adoption scheme (bapa angkat) should be extended to disabled athletes, whereby government-linked companies and big corporate entities adopt them and provide them with a flexible job.

“At least they don’t need to worry that if they go for training for two or three times in a week, they will lose their jobs,” he said.

Malaysia bagged one silver and one bronze medal in the London Paralympics Games last month, equaled the achievement of the able-bodied athletes in Olympics.

Of the 23 athletes in Malaysia contingent, Hasihin Sanawi won a silver medal in archery while Mohd Ziyad Zolkefli clinched a bronze in shot putt.


Source : http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2012/10/07/why-discriminate-paralympian-winners/