Sarawak to host 1st TAFISA Asian Sports For All 2022

It gives me great honour to officially announce that Sarawak will be host­ing the in­au­gu­ral Tafisa-Asia Sport for All Games fea­tur­ing hun­dreds of tra­di­tional and cul­tural phys­i­cal sports events in Au­gust 2022.

Un­like the nor­mal sports that we have that are al­ways com­pet­i­tive, this is some­thing that in­volves el­e­ments of tra­di­tion, cul­ture and good friend­ship. That’s the rea­son we bid for the event which will co­in­cide with the in­au­gu­ral Asian May­ors’ Sum­mit on Ac­tive Liv­ing 2022 to be held in Kuching as well.

The Sarawak govern­ment suc­cess­fully won the bid for the two in­ter­na­tional events in Tokyo, Ja­pan last Novem­ber. Spe­cific dates for both have yet to be fixed.

We have actually bid for one event (Tafisa-Asia Sport for All Games), but we were also of­fered the Asian May­ors’ Sum­mit 2022 too.

Par­tic­i­pants from up to 80 coun­tries are ex­pected to converge in Kuching for the in­ter­na­tional sports event which is more a cel­e­bra­tion of tra­di­tional and cul­tural her­itage than a com­pet­i­tive one.

I am also hoping for Malaysian tra­di­tional games such as blow pipes and kites could be con­sid­ered for the 2022 event.

We had the press conference on this event at my office recently and the As­so­ci­a­tion for In­ter­na­tional Sport for All (Tafisa) rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mr Finn Berggren was op­ti­mistic that other Asian cities will or­gan­ise the event af­ter Kuching make his­tory as the first Asian city to host it.

“We be­lieve, es­pe­cially af­ter our meet­ing with the nice peo­ple here, I hon­estly would like to say that we be­lieve the first TafisaAsia Sport for All Games 2022 in Sarawak would be a role model for the next edi­tion of the games to be held,” Berggren said.

A Mem­o­ran­dum of Understanding (MoU) was signed be­tween Tafisa, Malaysia Sports for All Coun­cil ( Masfa) and Sarawak Sports Cor­po­ra­tion to de­fine their prin­ci­ples of cor­po­ra­tion for the events.

Tafisa was founded in the 1960s in the be­lief that sports and phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ties are ba­sic hu­man rights for all peo­ple re­gard­less of sex, age, race, re­li­gion, abil­ity level or so­cioe­co­nomic back­ground.