I was shocked when I read the news release by the Youth and Sports Ministry earlier today to announce that the flagship marathon event in Kuala Lumpur, the Standard Chartered Kuala Lumpur Marathon or SCKL Marathon, has been postponed from Sunday, Oct 4, 2015, to Saturday Oct 10, 2015 to coincide with the inaugural National Sports Day.

This move on the part of the Youth and Sports Ministry and the Minister, Khairy Jamaluddin, is totally irresponsible, inconsiderate and defeats the intended purpose of the National Sports Day.

One of the purposes of the National Sports Day is to encourage more Malaysians to exercise and keep fit together. Ironically, the decision to change the date of the SCKL Marathon to Oct 10 will likely decrease the number of people exercising and keeping fit. Here are some reasons for this:

Reason 1: Oct 10 is a Saturday, which means that those who have to work on Saturday and who cannot take leave will be forced to miss this marathon.

Reason 2: Oct 10 is a Saturday, which means that those who are outstation and who cannot take leave on Friday to travel to KL will be forced to miss this marathon.

Reason 3: Many outstation runners may have bought their flight tickets already and since the SCKL Marathon doesn’t cover refunds for air tickets, runners who don’t want to pay for another ticket will be forced to miss this marathon.

Reason 4: At least nine other races in Malaysia will be held on Oct 10 and 11. Instead of being able to participate in two events - the SCKL Marathon and one of the races which will be held on Oct 10 and 11 - runners will be forced to choose between them and only participate in only one race.

Reason 5: Some runners may choose to miss this event because of perceived political interference by the minister and Youth and Sports Ministry.

Reason 6: Some runners may choose to miss this event because the experience of running on the roads in KL on a Saturday, with the increased traffic on the roads which are not totally closed, will be less enjoyable compared to running on a Sunday, with the lower amount of traffic.

The minister may not be aware of this but the date of any international marathon is set well in advance and should not be changed three months before the event.

As of 3.30pm, a mere two hours after the release of the statement by the Youth and Sports Ministry, the SCKL Marathon Facebook has been bombarded with 660 comments which are mostly critical of this decision and many people have tweeted @khairykj and @scklmarathon expressing their dissatisfaction with regard to this decision.

I urge the organisers of SCKL Marathon and the ministry and sports minister to listen to the voices of the people and restore the SCKL Marathon back to the original date of Oct 4. I also encourage all runners to tweet @scklmarathon and @khairykj with the hashtag #SCKLM4October and to post on their Facebook pages messages asking for the SCKL Marathon to be held on the original date of Oct 4, 2015.

ONG KIAN MING is MP for Serdang.