KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 25 — The venue for pencak silat for the 2017 SEA Games will be moved from the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre (KLCC) to Stadium Juara in Bukit Kiara, beginning Monday.

Following the change in venue, the only event scheduled for tomorrow evening had been brought forward to the morning session, while the event for Sunday which involved one gold medal, would be held on Monday to allow for work to be carried out to transfer the technical and broadcasting equipment.

Malaysian SEA Games Organising Committee (MASOC) chief executive officer, Datuk Seri Zolkples Embong said the decision was made yesterday due to exceptional response from the fans when the silat events started yesterday.

"The space at the KLCC is too small, looking at the aspect of fans capacity it could not accommodate the large crowd as silat required carpets for the competition as well as carpets for the warm-up session. As silat is an important sport that is traditional and attracts exceptional crowd, we had to change the venue,” he told a media conference, here today.

Commenting further, the Secretary-General of the Malaysian National Silat Federation (Pesaka), Datuk Megat Zulkarnain Omardin said the decision was also based on the safety factor because the seats for the spectators were too close to the arena which caused disappointment to the jury.

Due to the high expectation placed on silat to deliver many gold medals, Megat said the Stadium Juara could accommodate up to 3,000 spectators who would give strong support to the silat squad comprising the 2015 Male Athletic Figure (Olahragawan), Mohd Al Jufferi Jamari and 2017 Female Athletic Figure Siti Rahmah Mohamed Nasir.

"On the first day yesterday, there was only one event in the morning, the number of spectators who came was too many compared to the capacity that the venue could accommodate. So, many could not be admitted into the venue, including those with tickets due to the inadequate number of seats available.

"Events for Aug 27 had been brought over to Aug 28, which should have been a rest day while the rest day would be on Aug 27 to make way for setting up the equipment. All the 16 final events on Aug 29 will be held according to schedule,” he said. — Bernama