The coronavirus outbreak led to cancellation of various sports events, which has adversely affected the sports jobs market in the country. Job portal, Indeed, has revealed that there has been a rise — by 11 per cent — in searches related to sports jobs in August. However, there has been a 25 per cent dip in postings in the sports jobs space, indicating a dearth of sports jobs.
With sports complexes, gyms and stadiums being shut down, many trainers and coaches have been rendered jobless in the past few months.
The Indian Premier League (IPL) season, which is poised to start on September 19, will offer little relief as the tournaments are set to take place in the UAE this year. Therefore, officials and groundsmen who worked at the stadiums will still have no work. It is an opportunity lost for vendors too.
However, there is some hope with the Sports Ministry gearing up to set up the Khelo India Centre of Excellence (KISCE) in six more states, under the Khelo India scheme.
In this second phase, KISCE will be established in Assam, Dadra & Nagar Haveli, Daman & Diu, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Meghalaya and Sikkim.
Earlier this year, in the first phase, the Ministry had identified eight centres — Kerala, Karnataka, Odisha, Telengana, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Mizoram and Nagaland— to set up KISCE.
The Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) has recently approved the proposal of the Department of Sports to grant benefit of the sports quota to athletes of 20 new disciplines, including baseball, body building (earlier part of Gymnastics), cycling polo, deaf sports, fencing, kudo, mallakhamb, motorsports, net ball, para sports (earlier part of Paralympics and Para Asian Games), pencak silat, roll ball, rugby, sepak takraw, soft tennis, shooting ball, tenpin bowling, triathlon, tug-of-war and wushu.
