Sport can’t always be the priority

Members of Parliament think that putting money into sport will improve opportunities for our youths and keep them off the streets.
But has anybody with a functional brain ever asked why there are so many youths out on the streets in the first place?
It almost seems as if these leaders do not have any policies and therefore only want to be seen to be doing something just to get re-elected.
Or is it because these leaders want to use sport as a distraction so we will not realise how miserable our lives are?
Youths are on the streets because of two reasons.
One is the lack of space in government-run tertiary institutions; the private tertiary institutions are so expensive you will need to sell your organs to afford them.
The second is that there are not enough jobs to cater for the number of students passing out of our tertiary institutions, so most of them roam the streets with their degrees and diplomas in their back pocket.
What these leaders usually say is that sport will give our young people an opportunity to better their life, but I very much doubt that any of these leaders follow up on the sport programmes they’ve funded to see if anybody actually benefits from them.
Only one in five hundred of those kids get an actual opportunity, with the rest returning to their miserable existence with nothing to show for. I’m not saying sport is a bad thing because physical activity is good for your health.
But sports can wait.
First we need more government-run schools, and better ones too.
I do not trust these private schools because many of them masquerade as Christian or international when in reality they are simply chasing a profit.
With the second point, I cannot really fault the government because as far as attracting investors from abroad goes, the Peter O’Neill-led government is on the right track, as shown by its hosting of the Apec Leaders’ Summit last year.
Obviously more needs to be done and I trust the O’Neill government will do more.
I do not have anything against sport, but it will be a dark day for Papua New Guinea if we end up with more athletes than intellectuals.

Sandor Clegane