Commission chief tells of their fight to keep boxing clean

The Boxing Commission of Fiji has issued a stern warning to boxers to avoid using drugs.

The warning comes before boxing resumes to normal competition since the first coronavirus case was reported in March. Commission chairman Subash Appana said they had faced a few drug- related cases.

“Since we came onboard we have doing screening, in any programme we would pick up 10 boxers at random,” he said.

“Then of course we do checks on them. we the commission do have a policy in place that we deal with it internally and the boxers are being warned.

“We have communicated to all the clubs, managers and boxers that we will make drug testing compulsory,” Appana added.

Boxers will be suspended if they are caught.

The Commission is yet to be accredited with the Safe Sports Fiji to ensure a safe return to sports. “We need clearance from Government for this, they are a little bit tactical about boxing because we bring in foreign officials,” he said. “We will wait for a while and see how it works out, we are hoping to have two programmes, one in October and one in November. We have applications from two promotions.”

Meanwhile, Appana said Sebastian Singh is under indefinite suspension and the reason is that, he has been unable to make the weight on five different occasions, and secondly, his alleged disrespect for rules and use of profanity against a fight officer.

Budget

The commission had requested for $30,000 during its budget submission.

Appana said this had been reduced twice from the usual $80k due to poor audited accounts and the financial constraints brought by the coronavirus pandemic. ““Now further reduced to $30k because of COVID– 19, but we will do miracles,” he said.

All national sports organisation are awaiting their budget allocations for 2020-2021, which was announced on July 17.