Sheikh Sultan tells Sharjah sports clubs to focus and train Emiratis to earn subsidies

Gulf Today, Staff Reporter
 
His Highness Sheikh Dr. Sultan bin Mohammed Al Qasimi, Supreme Council Member and Ruler of Sharjah, sent a message to the Emirate's clubs, in which he emphasised that inspection is being carried out to find out what is happening inside each club, and that the subsidies are conditional to increasing the number of citizen members over the past year, and the amounts of subsidies will be measured by the community services provided by the clubs.

This came during a phone call to the live radio programme “Al Khat Al Mubasher” (The Direct Line).
“We tell them we will not give you money until you train our children. Foreigners are not all the society; there are our young people and children who should be the priorities of these clubs. We will inspect the clubs to monitor what is happening inside," he added.

His Highness Sheikh Sultan continued, “The subsidy allocated for clubs will be measured by the activities provided by each club for the community. We want sports clubs to work like the rest of the institutions in the emirate and to provide community service, and this is a message to clubs in Sharjah. We will not tolerate non-compliant people.”
 
Commending the diligence of the Kalba Club, Sheikh Sultan announced that work is underway to establish the Dibba Al Hisn Club, and sports centres will be built for the Kalba and Khorfakkan clubs, at a cost of Dhs40 million for each centre.

Sheikh Sultan said we have asked the officials to involve our children in these clubs, and we linked the subsidy with implementing this order, which was indeed implemented though “reluctantly” by some, but we only care about serving the community, and now we enter every club and inspect, and see what it offers, because this place houses a society that is not all foreigners, but rather our children and youth are also there, and we must pay attention to them," His Highness expounded.
 
Kalba Club
 
The Ruler of Sharjah continued, "We have a diligent Kalba Club, and we measure the matter not by the number of members, but by the number of citizens among the members and by the community services provided by the club. The best example of this is the diligent official Abdullah Hassan Al Darmaki, Secretary General of the Board of Directors of Ittihad Kalba Club. We thank him for this diligence, and we add a burden to him and reward the club. We will settle the club’s debts, if any. But, when we do that we want community service in return. We do not give money to clubs as an “honor” without knowing what it was spent on.”
 
Sharjah clubs
 
Sheikh Sultan went on: "We send a message to the Sharjah clubs and tell them, they will be “hardly  reckoned”, and know that the subsidy is conditional to increasing the number of citizens from last year, and it will be measured by your community activities, and you will be held accountable for what you have provided to society."
 
Sports Council
 
About the Sharjah Sports Council, the Ruler of Sharjah, said: "We call upon the Sharjah Sports Council, and we hope that it will hear us and spare us the trouble, and we tell it that all those who registered in the club have specialiations; they do not sit in the club "just to breathe air," but some of them play football, others play basketball, and so on; we have Al-Bataeh, Mleiha and Al-Madam clubs, all of them have complete facilities, and they have complete sports centres, and we are now building Dibba Al-Hisn Club, which will be fully equipped, and we will build a sports centre for Kalba Club and another for Khorfakkan Club, and the cost of each sports centre will be Dhs40 million, and this is not too much for our children who will be part of these centres, and we hope that the officials in the clubs will work hard. We wish success to all, and safety for the sons and daughters of this society.``