The General Secretary for the Athletics Federation, Filomena Reiss, said the government’s strong focus on football was discriminatory to other sports due to the imbalance in financial support.
She said many sporting disciplines, particularly individual sports, received little publicity or support from the government and other entities.
She said football was not the only sport in Timor-Leste and that other disciplines such as boxing, athletics, taekwondo, kempo (martial arts) and weightlifting should also be treated equally.
“These are interesting sports, but people do not pay a lot of attention,” she said.
Reis said the real champion in sport was the individual athlete as they had to fight alone in the arena.
She said individual sporting federations also faced many obstacles, particularly in terms of improving their capacity to prepare athletes for competition and the lack of proper areas for training.
She also expressed concern that while journalists often published news about football, other individual sports received little media coverage.
Meanwhile, President of Commission F (responsible for health, education, culture, veteran affairs, gender equality and sport) MP Virgilio da Costa Hornai said the government had put a lot of effort into improving sport in Timor, but it was a slow process.
He acknowledged that the annual subsidies provided to individual federations was inadequate, but said the government did not have a further budget available for sport.
