KUCHING: Karnival Orang Kurang Upaya Sarawak (Kokus) is going to take place from Nov 23 to 27 at the Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (Unimas) campus in Kota Samarahan.
Organised by the Welfare, Community Wellbeing, Women, Family and Childhood Development Ministry, Kokus will gather people with disabilities (OKU) from all over the state to participate in a carnival that consists of three components, namely Sports, Abilympics and Cultural Talents.
The Sports component will feature 11 games — Swimming, Athletics, Powerlifting, Ten-pin Bowling, Badminton, Ping Pong, Boccia, Bocce, Chess, Lawn Bowl and Archery.
Meanwhile, Abilympics will feature nine skills such as Drawing, Flower Arrangement, Cooking, Cake Making-Decorating, Sewing, Embroidery, Photography, Wood Carving and Data Processing.
For Cultural Talents, there will be three competitions, namely solo singing, solo instrumental and dancing (solo and group categories).
Welfare, Community Wellbeing, Women, Family and Childhood Development Minister Datuk Seri Fatimah Abdullah said the participants from all over the state would represent their respective divisions of birth.
“The Division Social Welfare Office (PKMB) will coordinate their registrations with the assistance of Division Youth and Sports Office and District Education Office.
“Through this carnival, we are encouraging and aiming at providing the OKU the avenues and opportunities to be involved in healthy, productive and entertaining activities,” she told a press conference at Baitulmakmur building here yesterday.
Fatimah also stated that the ministry planned to hold the carnival biennially.
“It is one of the efforts to identify new talents among the OKU for future tournaments,” she explained.
Touching on the implementation of Talent Identification (TID) and Classification in OKU sports, Fatimah revealed that in the first half of this year, 220 OKU had been tested and classified as potential athletes in various sports.
“To ensure that our state athletes are constantly training, Project Elite and Backup Squad in OKU sports are initiated by the ministry since early this year.
“Presently, there are 18 athletes in Project Elite and another 65 athletes in the Backup Squad. These athletes are currently groomed to perform in national competitions and international tournaments,” explained the minister.
To date, a total of 131 OKU athletes from Sarawak have taken part in national circuits in Swimming, Athletics, Powerlifting, Ten- pin Bowling, Badminton, Ping Pong, Boccia, Chess, Football and Archery.
The excellent performances of these OKU athletes were not overlooked as they were given further exposures at international competitions in China, Singapore and Thailand, said Fatimah.
She explained that the skills of OKU sports classifiers were improved by sending them to international courses in Thailand and China.
This was to ensure that the classification of athletes met the criteria requirements in the sports.
“These classifiers will be required to share their knowledge with other classifiers by conducting in-house training. Hands-on training in coaching skills in sports as well as sport science is done through sharing from senior to new coaches.
“A ‘Train-The-Trainers’ course is planned for many grassroots people who help and handle the OKU in sports, abilympics and cultural talents in their areas or districts.
“A course in sign language will be conducted for coaches, parents and helpers so that it will be easier for them to communicate with deaf people,” she said.
Also present at the press conference yesterday were Special Olympics Sarawak Kuching Chapter president Datin Dayang Mariani Abang Zain and the ministry’s OKU Development Unit administrative officer Matthew Chin.
