A woman recently criticised an organiser of a taekwondo event in Butterworth, Penang for allegedly poor time management.
A TikTok video by @haniejustme showed a clip of the event where hundreds of young taekwondo students were gathered in a hall, seated on the floor while the adults were seated on chairs on the stage.
In the event guidelines, participants allowed to register in the tournament are below eight years old and above 50 years old, and in the video, most of the participants allegedly forced to wait for a long time seemed to be younger in age.
She attended the opening ceremony of the event, scheduled to be held from 8am until 6pm last Saturday (Oct 19).
Hanie alleged that the parents and participants were made to wait from as early as 7.30am until 2pm just for the opening ceremony to end.
“2,000 participants joined this event but its management is akin to a night market. It was like this previously, we had to wait (for the event to finish) until night time. Seriously, this is the worst organiser ever,” she captioned her post, adding that participants were required to pay between RM60 to RM80.
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The taekwondo competition held on last Friday (Oct 18) until Sunday (Oct 20) was organised by a local club and association under Taekwondo Malaysia (TM) and the World Taekwondo Federation (WTF).
The tournament’s itinerary consisted of a “sparring event”, “‘poomsae’ event” for the individual category, “‘poomsae’ pair” and “speed kick” events. The ‘poomsae’ and speed kick categories were held for the carnival segment.
Based on the event guidelines, participants were required to pay a fee between RM60 to RM100 depending on the category.
Hanie also relayed her complaints about the event emcee speaking in a crass manner to the attendees.
“Can you all be quiet? Zip your mouths. It is like a morning market in here. Please keep quiet while we wait for our VIPs to arrive,” the emcee said in the video.
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Furthermore, those below eight years old until above 50 years of age are allowed to register for the event. (What has this got to do with the long wait?)
Some commenters confirmed attending the event and agreed with Hanie’s post calling out the event’s management for being all over the place.
“I was there too. The worst part is, they want to rest after the opening (ceremony)! They should have mentioned it earlier, don’t make the parents wait for so long,” a netizen said.
“I agree with you. I was there too and it looks like they did not learn from previous tournaments,” another user lamented.
“The VIPs were the ones who were late, the children got scolded instead,” a user pointed out.
