All geared up for National Sports Day

PUTRAJAYA: There is a special twist to this year’s National Sports Day (NSD).

Instead of the Youth and Sports Ministry organising the bulk of the activities, the onus is on the people to carry out their own activities.

The ministry’s deputy director-general (sports development), Mohd Azhari Mohammad, said it had empowered the public to organise sports activities.

He said the public was encouraged to register their programmes at www.harisukan negara.my.

“We have more than 2,000 activities that have registered with us and we believe the number is higher if we take into account the unregistered ones.

“This year is special because we are injecting the spirit of volunteering to be active in sporting activities,” he said.

Present were National Sports Day Secretariat head Mohsinar Abdul Malek, Malaysia Youth Council secretary-general Ahmad Saparudin Yusup, International Youth Centre director Dr Mohamed Maliki Mohamed Rapiee as well as athletes S.L. Karishma (netball) and Abd Latif Romly (long jump).

Since most of this year’s NSD activities were carried out on a voluntary basis, the ministry did not set any participation targets, said Azhari.

Instead, he encouraged the organisers who had registered their sports activities to do a head count and share the information with the NSD secretariat so that the ministry could get a rough estimate of the number of participants and gauge the people’s enthusiasm for sports.

“We also urge the public to share their activities via pictures or videos during the National Sport Day under four hashtags — #NegarakuBersukan, #JomTurunPadang, #GetYourGameOn and #HSN2017.”

He said there had been great excitement among the people about sporting activities since