KUALA LUMPUR: The National Sports Council (NSC) is reviewing the allowances of national athletes who have been given new contracts to undergo training programmes this year based on their performance since 2018.

NSC director-general Datuk Ahmad Shapawi Ismail said the restructuring of allowance was carried out following the current state of the country's economy which was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the natural disaster that hit the country recently.

"There is a slight reduction in allowances that are more justified to their current or best performance and this is fairer and commensurates with the medals won," he said at a press conference here today.

According to him, the gold medalists of the SEA Games and the ASEAN Para Games will receive an allowance of RM2,000 while the silver and bronze medalists will receive RM800.

He said the training allowance for athletes who won medals at the Asian Games/Asian Para Games and the Commonwealth Games was the same, with the gold medalists, getting an allowance rate of RM4,500 followed by RM4,000 (silver) and RM3,500 (bronze) while RM7,500 would await the gold medalist 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 receive RM500.

Ahmad Shapawi explained that the total training allowance did not include accommodation, food and drink, training and training infrastructure provided to athletes.

In 2019, a 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 RM2,000.

Asked whether the athletes were aware of the review of the allowance, he said they seemed to understand the current situation in the country which caused the allowance rate to be restructured.

Meanwhile, Ahmad Shapawi said the allowance was part of the RM27.5 million allocation given to the NSC to provide training programmes to senior athletes, coaches and para athletes who are competing in three major sporting events this year.

"We have our mission for the SEA Games in Hanoi, Vietnam this May followed by the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, the United Kingdom in July and the Asian Games in Hangzhou, China in September.

"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," he said.

In the meantime, he said NSC identified 248 regular athletes and 45 para athletes who were listed in this year's training programme while the backup training programme saw 178 regular athletes and 22 para athletes.

He said athletes who were not listed in the training programme should accept the fact that opportunities should be given to other athletes who performed better than them.

-- BERNAMA