The Philippine Sports Commission will lend a helping hand in addressing the concerns of member countries, whose delegates have started arriving this week in time for the formal opening of the 30th Southeast Asian Games.
Philippine SEA Games Organizing Committee president and CEO Ramon Suzara said this following an initial pre-game meeting with chef de missions of many countries that was held behind closed doors yesterday.
“We have addressed this in our first CDM meeting. The chairman (Ramirez) is here. And he will handle it,” said Suzara after emerging from the gathering at the SEA Games-Metro Manila Hub at the World Trade Center in Pasay City.
The concerns of the delegation from Singapore is one of the latest that the PHISGOC is dealing with.
The other day, Singapore Chef De Mission Juliana Seow informed Suzara in a letter that their delegation is in need of proper accreditation and is experiencing insufficient halal food and transportation service.
“We urgently seek your urgent and immediate attention to address the situations we are facing. We had tried our best to be patient and understanding. As much as we had tried to resolve the situations ourselves as well as with our sports and you, these situations cannot continue any further as our athletes are badly affected and are not able to prepare for the games effectively,” Seow wrote.
According to the letter, Singapore’s football team which is staying at Century Park Hotel was not given “sufficient halal food and had very limited food options.”
Lack of halal have forced some of its officials “to starve.”
Singapore’s netball team is at Somerset Alabang, which started competing yesterday, while its floorball team is at the Luxent Hotel.
The athletes from the two hotels “had to order food outside the hotel just to have a full meal.”
Seow also raised this issue during the closed-door meeting with Suzara, Ramirez and other CDMs.
This included accreditation and transportation issues.
“The Accreditation Centre at the airports were also not ready. We had to send our staff in our own vehicles to Football, Floorball and Netball hotels and bring their accreditation to World Trade Centre to validate and bring them back to the teams yesterday,” added Seow.
Suzara said the issues raised by the many delegates over the past days is nothing new.
That's because these issues have cropped up in previous hostings of the Games in other countries.
This time, the complaints have been amplified and, sometimes, exaggerated through social media, Suzara added.
