Ministry increases allowance for supplements

Sabi Hussain

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, October 7

In a good news for the country’s athletes preparing for the 2016 Rio Olympics, the Sports Ministry has decided to double the daily allowances for the national campers with immediate effect in order to enable them to purchase good quality dietary supplements.

According to a Ministry order, the athletes competing in the power games under Category ‘A’ (boxing, judo, taekwondo, weightlifting and throw events in athletics) will receive Rs700 per day as opposed to Rs320 per day, which they used to get earlier. Similarly, athletes under Category ‘B’ (sprint and team events) will get Rs400 per day, while sportspersons qualifying under Category ‘C’ (golf, shooting and archery) will be entitled for Rs300 per day.

The Ministry has also decided to increase the daily allowances of the junior athletes as the age-category national campers will receive 75 percent of the amount fixed for the seniors.

The Ministry has released a revised list of 14 branded and generic food supplements, and the coaches attached with the teams will have to keep this list in mind while recommending any food supplement to the athletes.

But the athletes who prefer branded food supplements that are sometimes not available with the Sports Authority of India (SAI) will have to approach their respective national federation to procure the nutritional diet.

This is where the experts feel that the Ministry has made a mistake. By allowing the sports federations to directly purchase the food supplements from companies, the Ministry has gone back on its earlier decision to select brands and food supplement suppliers itself.

It was the job of SAI to procure food supplements from the companies empanelled to the Ministry. But by empowering the federations to directly purchase the supplements from the suppliers, the Ministry runs into the risk of increased dope-related cases in the near future.

“The independent procurement of food supplements from different companies could be a tricky affair. The Ministry has made it mandatory that all food items should only be procured after getting a certificate from the supplier about its safety and WADA compliance,” leading sports medicine expert Dr. Ashok Ahuja said. “But, still there can’t be a 100 percent guarantee that the food supplement won’t contain a banned substance. The federation might err in this aspect. WADA will never accept any plea that in case a banned substance is found in any test it was a mistake on a particular company’s part.”

For the record, WADA had conducted a random test in 45 countries to ascertain the quality of the food supplements procured by the federations and athletes from outside. It was later found that around 70 percent of the ingredients had a banned substance.