Meeting with S.Arunandy

I have been seeing him since 1997 when I started to represent my school and district for athletics. He is the common face for FTAAA officials and also as coach in KL. Only yesterday, I got a chance to meet him and got to understand him closer.


He is currently with Sri Garden School as Sports Coordinator cum teacher. He was in teaching line for 30 years in government schools i.e Miharja, Cheras and Sungai Besi and lead those schools to glory especially in athletics, where he developed the sportsmen & women and also the facilities.

He said” I’m doing this because of the passion and I get the satisfaction. You wont get full satisfaction in whatever you do but you will still do it, if you love it”.

Even his old students in 80s and 90s still calls him for gathering old boys gathering.

He started to notice me during the Inter Accounting Firm Games in 2005, where I beat his trainees (from KPMG) and he was amazed, how come an accountant can be good on track (he didn’t know that I was also in the KL Athletics team then). Then, he kept seeing me for the next 5 years. Yesterday, he asked me and I told him that I’m no longer with accounting firms.

Then I asked few questions:

1. What’s the future of the Malaysian Sports, especially athletics?

Till politicians are in the board, the sports wont develop. Sportsman (ex-athlete) should lead the sports association and also the Sports Council. Too many red tapes to be followed or abide.

2. What happened actually to 4x400M sea games squad?

The boys were selected under category B (which means they can go, under state or MAAU expense) but this boys were under Armed Forces team. So, Armed Forces has to pay. Armed Forces comes under Ministry of Defence and it takes another long process for payment purpose. So it dragged and they were playing ping pong among MAAU, Armed Forces and NSC. Their inefficient decision came to conclusion only 2 days before the event. So tha’s the story for reaching Palembang 48hours before the event.

Then, the organisers changed the medal presentation schedule to later date. MAAU, could not get any ticket during that 5 days as all were fully booked and MAAU didn’t want to pay additional allowance, accommodation fees, should the stay is longer. So, this made the boys to come back earlier that the actual medal presentation date.


3. What’s really happening now in MAAU and Sports Ministry?

There is double/triple standards played in the ministry. Look at Karate, they are performing but no proper fund and they want to sack the coach. But for football, they can even send a special flight to fly back the players to homeground.


When a budget is approved for RM1.2mil, the project will go to some ministers relative. He will eat RM600k. Then, pass it to contractor A, and he will take RM300k and sub-con to contaractor B. Con B will take RM150k and sub con it to Contractor C. So Contractor C will do the job for RM150k, when actual project was worth RM1.2mil. So 90% is eaten by the politicians and top management and job is done for 10%.