At the top of the United Progessive Party’s (UPP’s) mandate for the development of sports in Antigua and Barbuda is the inclusion of persons who are differently abled.
The party’s spokesperson for sports, Chester Hughes, said that “when” the UPP wins the next general elections, they will “push forward for that first national differently abled game in Antigua and Barbuda where every sport has persons with disabilities participate in a competitive way so we could have them involved in our national sporting agenda.”
And this he said was apart of the UPP’s manifesto in the last general election.
In addition, Hughes said that “the development of the database of all Antiguan and Barbudan athletes is a must,”in effort to assist researchers in finding historic sporting information.
Furthermore, “we need to increase the whole question of identifying our elite athletes from a young age and put them through the necessary training programme so that we could actually monitor and help them with their educational development and athletic ability from an early age,” the former parliamentarian said.
Hughes also declared that “Barbuda will not be left behind in any sporting development that the UPP implements.”
The 2009-2014 Member of Parliament for All Saints East and St. Luke made those statements on Observer Media’s Good Morning JoJo radio programme, opining that the current government has neglected the area of sports in the nation.
He said: “since the government has taken over the reigns of power in this country you can point towards very few things that have really been accomplished in sports. Sports for me has gone stagnant in Antigua and Barbuda. YASCO is still where its at. Of course, that was the flag ship for the new Labour party administration; it is still stagnant, and they are gonna blame Covid of course.”
“There’s been absolutely no upgrade of any sporting facility in this country. Absolutely none,” he exclaimed.
He further purported that “this government has no intention or interest of developing sports to the level where our athletes can excel with the necessary sporting facilities and support from the administration.”
Hughes noted that on the other hand, while the UPP was in government, they “lit almost every sporting field in this country which gave a rise to football and teens being able to practice in the evening and ply their trade in the night,” fenced sporting facilities and so on.
