06 Jun 2023

The newly elected Botswana Swimming Sport Association (BSSA) president says while more funding is required to implement their strategy, her focus will be on implementing things that do not require funding.

Their strategy developed last year could not be implemented and time was ripe to get to work, said BSSA president Kgaotsang Matthews in an interview in Gaborone recently.

“The first things is that we would need a strategy road map to ensure that all the things that need to be done in the next two years are done, and another important thing is the BSSA structure, all the committee members are fully employees somewhere,” she said.

Matthews said it was imperative that the BSSA structure should be different and their priority was to employ a permanent officer who would be running BSSA full time.

“It would also help us to push things in a different way, and the officer would come handy in instances where World Aquatics needed something urgently,” she said.

She said funding was the most crucial part in running a successful code, adding that all national sport associations (NSAs) equally needed money to run their day to day activities.

She said swimming needed funding for its operations, adding that she was confident that they could work around it.

The other funding that they needed, she said, would be to fund strategic objective.

“Currently we rely on Botswana National Sport Commission and World Aquatics for financial support while African Swimming Confederation only assist us when they have events, and as such funding remains a major challenge,” she said.

Matthews said her committee desired to grow swimming sport and making it a sport for all to break the notion that it was Gaborone and Francistown sport only.

She said their role as BSSA was to make the sport accessible.

“We therefore need to find out whether the pool in Jwaneng has starting block and lane ropes and if it does, we then talk to the coach so that they set up a club,” she said. ENDS