Holding of sports festival in Jaffna to be reviewed
[TamilNet, Tuesday, 08 July 2003, 15:52 GMT]
The people of the Jaffna district feel that it is not an opportune moment to hold the twenty-ninth Sri Lankan National Sports Festival in Jaffna, when normalcy has not returned in the lives of displaced people and no concrete proposal has been furnished for the establishment of an interim administration in the Northeast province, said the LTTE’s Jaffna district sports division head, Mr.Mathulan, at a conference held at the Jaffna district secretariat Tuesday morning, sources said.
"We will announce our stand on this issue shortly," Mr.Mathulan further said at the conference, which was presided over by the Additional Government Agent for Jaffna, Ms. Paththiniammal Thilanayagam Paul, and attended by Sri Lankan government officials and provincial sports officials in the Northeast. The conference was organized specially to finalize arrangements to hold the National Sports Festival in Jaffna during August 4 - 9. The plan was initially to hold the festival in the first week of September, but it has been advanced to August, district secretariat sources said. Meanwhile, sports ministry officials are seen busy in modernizing the Thuraiappah stadium to hold the proposed national sports festival at a cost of ten million rupees. About five thousand students are expected to participate in the national sports festival, sources
said. If the opposition to holding the national sports festival in Jaffna mounts, the festival is likely to be shifted to Badulla in the south, official sources said.
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