Jakarta, 2 April 2024
The year of 2024 will be among others indicated by the 2024 National Sports Games (PON), which will be organized in Aceh and Northern Sumatera. The related – PON will be the first event conducted in 2 provinces at the first time since PON was firstly organized in Surakarta on 1948 and the last PON was held in Papua on 2021. The organization of PON in 2 provinces is the impact of the implementation of the Government Regulation of No. 7 of 2020 on the Amendment of the Government Regulation of No. 17 of 2007 on the Organization of National Games and Sports Championship. Consequently, there should be very comprehensive preparation to organize the 2024 PON which will be conducted in the short coming months, in particular there are only 6 months prior to the event. All of the national sports stakeholders and especially the government wish the Games will be successfully organized on time and will achieve the national and even international sports performances.
Because doping control is a compulsory activity which should be conducted at an event such prestigious PON, IADO has prepared all of the activities for PON. For information, since several previous PONs, there had always been doping control activities carried out by LADI (NADO which was the forerunner of IADO previously). On the basis of such preparation coordination, KONI (National Sports Committee of Indonesia) as the Main Event Organizer of PON invited IADO to attend a further meeting on March 2nd, 2024 at the Office of KONI. The meeting was led by Mr Achmad Saefudin (Vice Secretary General of KONI) and was also attended by most of the Board of Directors of IADO. On that meeting, IADO appreciated KONI to discuss the matter of doping control for the 2024 PON. However, IADO strongly encouraged KONI to extend the scope of doping control activities.
It is fully understandable that until the previous PON in Papua of 2021 the doping control was sample collections only. For the 2024 PON, IADO does not want to take any risk, because according to the World Anti-Doping Code, any doping control should also include education and investigation activities instead of testing solely. On the other side, IADO has also fully understood that there is a limited financial source, provided by the government. The conclusion is that both IADO and KONI are trying to revise the activity of doping control without breaking the Code.