These people were sodomized just like the Military Veterans who retired before 2013

In 1972, M Mahendran was hailed as Malaysia’s sportsman of the year. He was promised RM5,000, a princely sum at the time, enough to buy a modest house. Yet for half a century, he never saw a cent.

Last week, the Malaysian Hockey Confederation quietly settled the debt. Days earlier, cyclist Ng Joo Ngan, the 1970 sportsman of the year, was told he would finally receive his RM5,000 too.

Other winners from that golden era — badminton’s Sylvia Ng, bowling’s JB Koo — are expected to follow. Athletics, meanwhile, is only now setting up a task force. On the surface, it looks like closure: promises made, promises honoured.

But scratch deeper and the question looms: is RM5,000, untouched by inflation or interest, really justice after 50 years of neglect? Both Mahendran and Ng have taken the high road, saying they were just grateful to finally receive the principal sum. But their acceptance should not silence the larger debate: what is fair redress when promises to athletes are broken for half a century?

When RM5,000 meant the world

To grasp the scale of the broken promise, step back into the Malaysia of the late 1960s and early 1970s. RM5,000 then was not a token cheque. It was life-changing. In 1972, an average government clerk earned about RM300 a month.

The award equalled a year and a half’s salary, recognition meant to secure dignity for those who gave their best to the nation in sport. Today, RM5,000 is respectable but hardly transformative. Its purchasing power has collapsed.

A house in Kuala Lumpur that cost RM30,000 in the early 1970s now sells for over RM500,000. A new car that went for under RM10,000 then costs RM60,000 or more today. That’s why, as the payments began trickling in, conversations about accumulated interest and inflation surfaced.

What ‘interest’ would mean

In finance, money grows if invested. If RM5,000 had been placed in a savings account at 4% per annum, it would now be worth many times the original. Compounded annually, as banks do, the sum could exceed RM30,000. Adjusted for inflation, it would match what RM5,000 bought in 1972, not what it buys now.

Athletes and fans raising the issue weren’t being greedy. They wanted fairness: to restore value, not just numbers. Malaysia Athletics, responsible for nine awardees between 1966 and 1982, has said its task force will consider the interest question. What that means remains vague.

Amateurism as an excuse?

Some argue athletes of that era were amateurs. Under the Olympic ideal, sport was pursued for glory, not money, and cash prizes clashed with that ethic. But that argument collapses under scrutiny. Amateur or not, the awards were real.

They were announced, endorsed by ministers, celebrated in newspapers. The cash was no rumour — it was a promise. A promise unfulfilled is a broken promise. Amateur status does not absolve neglect, nor excuse institutions from honouring their word.

Law, limits, and reality

Could the athletes sue for interest? Legally, it would be an uphill climb. Malaysia’s Limitation Act 1953 requires most debt claims within six years of the due date. That clock ran out decades ago.

Rare exceptions exist — an admission of debt or partial payment can reset the period — but nothing of the sort happened until now. Even if courts entertained such claims, Malaysian practice has been to award simple, not compound, interest.

Compound awards are possible in restitution cases, as seen in the UK’s 2007 Sempra Metals decision, where the court allowed compound interest on overpaid tax, recognising that lost time is lost value. But such rulings remain exceptional. In practical terms, litigation costs would dwarf the RM5,000 principal. Most athletes are in their twilight years. They want closure, not court battles.

A middle path — but whose responsibility?

There is a middle path. The government could step in to ensure dignity. But why should taxpayers foot the bill twice? In the 1970s, the government had already disbursed the prize money. It went to the national sports associations (NSAs), who were responsible for passing it on. Somewhere along the chain, the money stopped.

If taxpayers now underwrite the same RM5,000 again, the real culprits escape scrutiny. The NSAs that received the funds must answer: what happened? Was it mismanaged, misused, or allowed to vanish into poor record-keeping?

The government may need to step in temporarily, but it must not let associations off the hook. At the very least, there must be an audit and a public explanation. Only then will a “one-off fund” be seen not as double payment, but as restitution with accountability.

Precedent: fair or dangerous?

The fear is precedent. If the government compensates for inflation or pays token interest here, will others queue up with old claims? Former civil servants with lost allowances, pensioners with errors in disbursement, contractors unpaid decades ago could argue they too deserve restitution.

It’s a concern. But sport is different. These awards were tied to national honours. They were announced at banquets with ministers, celebrated in the press. They carried symbolic weight. To treat them as private debts, indistinguishable from commercial arrears, strips them of meaning.

A narrowly defined remedy — limited to these awards, these years, these names — would not open floodgates. Instead, it would set a precedent of fairness: when the state fails its sporting heroes, it makes amends.

Lessons for the future

This controversy is not only about the past. It is also about how sport in Malaysia is run today. The fact that prize money could vanish into thin air — unrecorded, unaccounted, unpaid — lays bare poor governance.

NSAs, most still dependent on government funding, must face stricter audits. Records of prize allocations must be maintained and made public. Otherwise, history will repeat itself, and 50 years from now, another generation will ask why their parents’ sacrifices were forgotten.

A chance for dignity

For Mahendran and Ng, the late payments are not about the money. They stressed gratitude and a desire not to burden their associations. Their humility should shame the institutions that failed them, not absolve them.

The athletes are content. But the nation should not be. Malaysia must decide what message it wants to send. That broken promises can be patched up with a token sum half a century late? Or that it is never too late to restore dignity, match words with deeds, and give past champions the honour they deserve?