16 Sep 2022

The Ministry of Youth, Gender, Sport and Culture is worried by alleged acts of misconduct among sport administrators.

Addressing a media conference in Gaborone on Wednesday, permanent secretary in the ministry, Kitso Kemoen, said attention had been drawn to incidents of indiscipline and arrogance by some administrators

He said it was disappointing that people who were entrusted to lead sport were behaving like ‘kings and queens’ while others ran the sport bodies as if they were personal property.

“We are following these activities with keen interest and for now we will leave it to Botswana National Sport Commission,” he said.

He warned that should this misconduct continue, it would taint the good name of Botswana sport.

On other issues, Kemoen said the ministry had not managed to resuscitate school sport since some of the stakeholders were not happy with the level of engagement.

Therefore, the ministry had resolved to lead the process of normalising the engagement process.

Kemoen said, although they were not in a position to set deadlines, the ministry was convinced that engagements would soon conclude for sport to resume in schools in the 2023 calendar year.

Meanwhile, Kemoen said constituency tournaments were among projects that were badly hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“As is the case with mainline sport, the programme has been reinstated, albeit with some alterations. The revised programme commenced in August 2022,” he stated.

He said the new consituency programme had two stages instead of the original four, adding the regional and the national levels had been eliminated from the programme, with only the ward and constituency levels remaining.

Kemoen said the format of the ward level stage had also been altered to follow a league type of arrangement, instead of the original knockout format.

The new format would allowe teams to stay in the programme longer.

He said the prize money had also been adjusted and teams in positions four up to six would receive consolation prizes at ward level.

“This is an improvement from the original programme where prizes were only awarded up to position three,” he said.

Kemoen said the ministry was also considering ways in which the constituency sports programme could add more value.

He said this was not done in isolation as other programmes also needed to be looked at in order to bring about a complete reset that would derive optimal value for Batswana. ENDS