President Tsai Ing-wen says she will push to reform the associations which oversee individual sports. Her comments came Monday when receiving the athletes who represented Taiwan at the Olympics in Rio. The president said that the goal was to create an environment that enables athletes and coaches to focus on their competitions.
Tsai said that the Sports Administration and the Interior Ministry will work together to reform the individual athletic associations. She said they will focus on making them more open, professional, and representative, and would enable more people to become involved in operations.
The reforms will also focus on creating an open, transparent and professional system for selecting coaches and athletes. Tsai said an independent arbitration committee would also be established to help protect the rights of the competitors.
“If competitors and coaches receive unfair treatment in the future, they will be afforded fair and speedy arbitration," said Tsai.
"Associations will be required to abide by the decisions of the arbitrators and they will not be able to [respond by] making things difficult for the athletes, as some are reporting," she said.
Other reforms will include making athletic association finances more transparent, and using international standards to draw up contracts with sponsors. Another goal will be to create objective standards for appraising athletic performance and awarding subsidies, so that individuals cannot benefit from personal relationships.