Team Central start fund-raising for PNG Games

TEAM Central started its fund-raising drive for the PNG Games in Kokopo, East New Britain in November on Saturday night at the Port Moresby Country Club with a bang.
Faced with a budget of close to K1 million to send about 300 athletes and officials to Kokopo, the Central provincial government handed over K50,000 from a K250,000 pledge on the night.
The provincial government had already released K60,000.
Present to contribute were representatives from PNG Ports with K5,000 and Moore Publishing K2,000.
“There’s so much work to do,” team steering committee and coordinator Tabu Waira said.
“We’ve picked 15 out of the 24 sports that were offered. We have done this with careful consideration for the events and sports that we are confident of winning medals, especially gold.
“Our focus is individual sports with the aim to take all our teams and a little more if we hit our target.”
The team will compete in boxing, taekwondo, netball, volleyball, cricket, rugby sevens, rugby league nines, athletics, soccer and disabled sports at the Games.
Waira appealed to Members of Parliament, business houses and individuals to get behind their drive.
“Besides the chance to go to Kokopo and win medals and participate as part of this national sporting event, we want to give as many of our local Central sporting talents the opportunity to be recognised and go on to represent the country,” Waira said.
“We unearthed about three boxers, cricketers, and out-of-nowhere disabled athlete Regina Wala from these games so we want to bring more out.”
Costs that teams going to Kokopo have had to work hard to cover are travel to and from Kokopo, accommodation and meals, internal transportation and uniforms.
The process to select teams has cost money, with primary selections from district games to provincial games and has required a lot of financial support.