Commonwealth karate gold medallist Nastenka Sureshar said she will be returning the money she has crowd-funded to finance her education after the National Sports Council of Malaysia (NSCM) stepped in.
"While I would like to sincerely thank everyone who had contributed to me through the Skolafund crowd-funding platform, I wish to announce that I will not accept the public donations that have been collected.
"This is because through the national back-up programme, there would be no more need for this fund as most of my expenditure would have been taken care of," she said in an open letter yesterday.
Nastenka said the NSCM last year made her an offer to join the programme but she had made a hasty decision not to accept it, which had then put her in a difficult position.
"After receiving overwhelming attention to my request for financial aid by various parties, I decided to meet again with the NSCM officials to obtain more information on the training package which was offered to me last year to be an athlete under the national back-up programme.
"At that time, I rejected the offer, and I have now realised that it was an unwise decision as I was very stressed out with my final examinations at the time," she said.
Nastenka said the offer would allow her to train full-time and at the same time, study at Universiti Tenaga Nasional (Uniten) without worrying about lodging, food, transport, and medical care. She will also receive a monthly allowance.
"I have now decided to reverse my decision (and) to accept the offer and I would like to appeal to Malaysia Karate Federation (Makaf) and the NSCM for me to be reconsidered to be allowed to train full-time in Bukit Jalil.
"When I met the NSC officials today (Thursday), I was also very happy that they assured that they still had room to accept my application," she said.
Ministry not to be blamed
Nastenka also apologised to Makaf, the Youth and Sports Ministry (KBS) and NSCM for causing "unnecessary misunderstanding".
"I would like to stress again that I do not blame Makaf, KBS and NSCM over the matter as they have contributed much to my training and competitions and that my decision to use Skolafund was merely to supplement my own pocket money.
"Once again, I'd like to appeal that this matter not be prolonged as I would like to devote my full concentration to my practice, to achieve my goal to be an athlete who will bring continuous honour to Malaysia in future," she said.
Last Sunday, Malaysiakini highlighted Nastenka's bid to crowd-fund RM6,350 to cover her meals, accommodation, and transport for six months at Uniten.
Her plight gained much attention and by Wednesday, she had raised RM6,995.80 through the platform while MIC Wanita also offered her a monthly allowance of RM1,000 for six months.
Nastenka said she had relied on crowd-funding after failing to secure a scholarship from KBS, which assessed her before her gold medal outing at the 2015 Commonwealth Karate Championships.
