Very soon Montenegrin top athletes and their coaches will be situated for life, as it was recently done in Serbia. Within the Montenegrin Olympic Committee, a Working group was founded, and in next two-three days they will send to the Ministry of culture, sports and media, i.e. the Government of the Republic of Montenegro proposal for the Decree on national acknowledgements and awards for special contribution and affirmation of sports, according to conclusions of the Executive Committee and the Assembly of the MOC. Andrija Popović, Vice/president of the MOC said for Arena: – According to this proposal for the Decree national acknowledgements and awards for special contribution to the development and affirmation of sports are asigned, as well as the criteria for assigning them. All athletes and their coaches, who are citizens of Montenegro and who won medals on the Olympic Games, World and European championships, Paraolympic Games and the Chess Olympiad as members of the National team of Yugoslavia and Serbia and Montenegro, as well as those representing Montenegro are included, also those who have set the record in the Olympic sports. This montly imburstment will be highest for winners of the golden medals on the Olympic Games, Chess Olympiad, Paraolympic Games and bearers of the world records in Olympic sports, and it would be as three average wages in Montenegro. For the silver medal winners on the above mentioned competitions, imburstment will be lower – two or one average wages in Montenegro. Similar solutions, sais Popović, already exist in most of the EU countries, USA, former SSSR countries and the neighbpuring countries (Serbia already has these awards, Croatia is dealing with this issue at the moment) etc. – It isn’t necessary to mention how much the achievement of the international results contributes to international promotion of Montenegro. We believe that the State wii support top sport which has special price all over the world. This will be the signal for the athletes that the State supported them and that for the citizens of Montenegro they represent significant factor of the State identity. As a reminder, Dragan Drobnjak, deputy Minister for sport within the Ministry of culture, media and sports, few days ago said that the Ministry and the Government are ready to take over the responsability for lifetime financing of the top athletes. For something like that, we only wait for an initiative-he stated. G. B.
