By Neto Baptiste
The United Progressive Party (UPP), once successful at the polls when general elections are called next year, will move to implement a comprehensive rewards programme for businesses that reinvest into sports via sponsorship.
This is according to the party’s candidate for the St Mary’s South Constituency, Kelvin “Shugy” Simon, who said the programme will also encourages those businesses to invest heavily in schools sports.
“I don’t think that schools should be going out with sponsor sheets, we’re past that so you put a plan together for the business community offering proper concessions and incentives and this is what we [UPP] have planned for these businesses, so once they inject funding into sports then they will get it back at the end of the day. Everybody watches their money and if the money is not there to be invested, especially if there is no return then they would be reluctant to invest but the United Progressive Party has that sports sponsorship policy that we will be implementing to encourage the business community to give more to sports,” he said.
Simon, who was speaking on the Good Morning Jojo Sports Show at the time, reminded that sports could also be an important tool in shaping the lives of young men and women.
“When a youth would have had time to idle that’s probably one of the worst environments you can create and sports takes away that idle time and it bring them, not only in a productive era but in a family-type setting where they can feel a sense of belonging. If they love that sport enough then the thought of that sport being taken away is going to be a deterrent for them getting into deviant behavious and so on that is going to take away the opportunity to play. At our school, we created a policy where if your grades are below a certain mark or if your behaviour is not up to par then you can’t play,” the candidate said.
Although there is a rewards system currently in place where businesses could receive tax write-offs in return for sponsoring sporting events or teams, some of complained over the length of time it takes to actually see a return while others have labelled the process as cumbersome.
