Basketball committed to development

Sports

The Basketball Federation of Papua New Guinea is going through a transition period with the appointment of fulltime executive officer Joel Khalu and others.
And the implementation of its development plans will depend on funding as well as support from associations, says president Nick Daroa.
The BFPNG president said this when responding to comments by coach Larry Miro, who claimed the standard of basketball in the country had taken a nose-dive with results at the recently-completed national championships exposing the gap in standards between the established centres like Port Moresby and Lae and the other associations in PNG.
Daroa agreed that development initiatives were focused on the national capital but they would branch out to other centres.
“We have development programmes in place which are supported by stakeholders to spread the gospel of the game to all four corners of the country,” Daroa said.
He said one of the development partners, Exxon Mobil had been supporting the code to reach the impact area in Hela region.
“We could not reach out to other centres because of funding but we would appreciate member associations to step up and support the cause in funding coach clinics in their associations,” he said.
Daroa said presently a lack of adequate funding was the biggest obstacle in implementing the federation’s development programmes throughout the country.
“We are expecting to travel soon to all other parts of the country once BFPNG secures funding from development partners such as Exxon Mobil and others,” he said.