With the World Anti-Doping Organization (WADA) compliance issue already settled, the Philippine National Anti-Doping Organization (Phi-NADO) is looking to open its communication lines with various stakeholders, especially the national athletes, to make sure that the trouble will not happen again.
Phi-NADO chief Dr. Alejandro Pineda yesterday said having an open communication lines with the Philippine Sports Commission (PSC), Philippine Olympic Committee (POC) and the national sports associations (NSAs) will be a major help to their goal of staying compliant with the WADA guidelines.
The Filipinos flirted with the possibility of getting their flag suspended from international competitions after the Montreal-based world anti-doping watchdog found out that they are not compliant with their guidelines.
Phi-NADO tried to make an appeal but WADA referred the case to the Court of Arbitration for Sports.
Eventually, WADA scratched the Philippines off its compliance watchlist after Phi-NADO fulfilled four points of contention: The open testing distribution program, athletes’ biological passport, registration testing pool, and results management.
Still, Pineda said the job is far from done.
“We need to work with the Philippine Sports Commission, the Philippine Olympic Committee and all the national sports associations and federations. We need to continuously dialogue and share so that we can make our lives easier in terms of testing program,” Pineda said during the Philippine Sportswriters Association Forum Tuesday at the Rizal Memorial Sports Complex.
“We have been communicating through the Philippine Olympic Committee. As we did state, it should be that we are on talking points. We need to allow them to come into the picture and help us in the processes and help us implement the rules.”
“We need to work with PSC, the POC, and the NSAs. It has to be a collaboration.”
With the Philippines finally getting cleared, the threat of getting suspended from international action, especially in the Olympics, had formally been removed.
Pineda, however, asserted that they will continue to do their job and stay consistent and compliant, especially with the WADA possibly conducting an audit in the future.
“WADA will come over and do the audit because we are on the radar of WADA after performing well in the Olympics and the Asian Games. The Tier 2 level countries in Southeast Asia, they have been audited and that leaves the Philippines,” Pineda said.
“It could come this year or next year, depending on their calendar. All it means is that they come over, they explore documents, written policies and many more.”
PSC executive director Paulo Francisco Tatad stressed that Phi-NADO needs a budget of more than P10 million annually so that it can operate by WADA standards.
“The mere fact that we have a working budget of P10 million is okay. We have been mentioning that the testing portion is P12 million, which supersedes the P10 million. We have to reiterate that it needs a bigger budget,” Tatad said.
“There’s a certain level that athletes need to maintain as well as doping requirements. The job isn’t done yet.”
PSC chairman Richard “Dickie” Bachmann said the PSC can shift its focus to supporting the athletes now that the WADA issue had been finally resolved.
“We’re communicating with each NSA, especially those who still have windows in their Olympic qualifiers like Hidilyn Diaz from the end of the month until April. I may also fly there to support them,” Bachmann said.
“It’s huge for athletes to compete with your flag flown, especially during the awarding ceremony. PSC needs to communicate with Phinado, get the plantilla positions and get extra funding for Phi-NADO.”
