The minister of Youth and Sports, Mr Sheriff Gomez, has revealed that the upcoming National Youth Conference and Festival (NAYCONF) scheduled for December 2010 will take a different direction with incorporation of cultural festival into the series of activities as a way of exposing the country's youths to our diverse and rich culture, which is fading away.

The Youth and Sports supremo made this remark yesterday at the Semega Janneh Hall in Serrekunda East during the daytwo of his on-going regional tour which took him to Kanifing Municipality the host of the 2010 NAYCONF. Hosting the biennial gathering for the first time in almost a decade, the youths of the Kanifing Municipal Council demanded to know how far the Youth and Sports ministry has gone in improving the current sporting infrastructure within the municipality for the successful hosting of an event that seeks to address the one thousand problems that the young people do encounter in their daily life.

With no Local Organising Committee (LOC) in place yet for the proper coordination of the festival that is fast approaching, the KMC youths seemed to be dissatisfied with the pace of preparation for the smooth hosting an event they last hosted in 1999. But any fear that the December festival might suffer  setbacks in terms of proper organisation and coordination was downplayed by the Youth and Sports minister, who insisted that this year's gathering will be a difference where youth conference and cultural carnival would top the agenda.

Turning attentions to the purpose of their visit to the Kanifing Municipality, the Permanent Secretary at the ministry of Youth and Sports, Mr Mambanjick Njie, said the ministry has come up with a five-year strategic development plan that is to serve as a roadmap for youth and sports development in the country. He however, noted that it is not enough to put together a development plan, hence the need to discuss with the youths and regional councils on how these plans could be successfully implemented within the stipulated period. According to Permanent Secretary Njie, the on-going consultative meetings with youth organisations in the various regions will help to enlighten all and sundry on the direction the ministry is heading which is the drive towards the attainment of excellence in sports.

However, for Mr Musa Njie, General Manager of Independence Stadium and a member of the entourage, the attainment of sports excellence greatly lies on the availability of standardised infrastructure, which encourage participation. According to him, Banjul used to be a force to be reckoned with in football during the 1960s simply because it was housing the nation's only sports infrastructure the Box Bar. Njie said, recently KMC has been a dominance force in the sports arena thanks to the rapid improvement in it sports infrastructure.

For Mr Besenty Gomez, the Executive Secretary of the National Sports Council, the Youth and Sports ministry's move to develop a five-year strategic development plan may not be enough; hence the need for regional sports bodies to also have a defined development plans at their own level thereby encouraging bottom-top approach. Gomez sniped at regional sports bodies for having the habit of putting all there efforts into one activity in nawettan football, and in doing so, deny others the chance to excel in their chosen sports of other disciplines.

He therefore implored the various regional sports bodies to promote nawettan football as much as other sporting disciplines in the interest of diversity and equity. For his part, Mr Yankuba Colley, the lord Mayor of Kanifing Municipal Council who doubles as APRC national mobiliser, thanked the Youth and Sports ministry for taking the initiative to come down to the level of the people it serves in order to identify their problems and map out the way forward.

Mayor Colley apprised Minister Gomez and his entourage of his council's tireless contribution towards youth and sports promotion, hinting that this year alone, a substantive amount of three million dalasis was earmarked for the youths, which is in addition to the numerous students the council continues to sponsor at secondary school level.