24 Jun 2024

Botswana Football Association (BFA) and Football Union Botswana (FUB)’s bargaining agreement has given birth to a standard contract and code of conduct documents. 

Addressing FUB congress in Gaborone Saturday, BFA president, Maclean Letshwiti said the standard contract was for national team players both male and female.

He therefore appealed to FUB to address players’ welfare issues and to ensure that they did not enter agreements that did not subscribe to standardised rules of play.

 “We have made it mandatory for all players in the top league to subscribe to the standard contract. 

You cannot allow a team to come with some form of personalised document. The only recognised contract that the BFA accepts is the standard contract. It is the responsibility of everyone in the game to ensure that the mechanisms are enforced,” said Letshwiti.

“The player is failing and FUB is failing to educate their members on the new developments in terms of contracts, BFA is failing by accepting documents that were not acquiescent with the standard contract,” he said.

In 2019, Letshwiti also said FUB signed a landmark cooperation agreement with BFA to enable greater collaboration and corporation to improve players working conditions across the leagues.

Also, he said BFA was impressed by the constant interaction with FUB on matters affecting players. 

“Our collective vision both BFA and FUB is to improve the social relations between football structures and players,” he said.

He further said the National Dispute Resolution Chamber (NDRC) was established to address labour related disputes.

However, Letshwiti said the NDRC was faced with challenges that were being addressed by amending regulations, an exercise that was recently completed to improve delivery of justice for the players.

“We have the tools to regulate the environment. 

I do not understand why FUB and the BFA chief executive officer were not using the tools at their disposal,” he said. 

He said Botswana was probably among the 10 countries in Africa that subscribed to the NDRC.

Letshwiti said out of the 54 countries in Africa, only 14, including Botswana had an active footballers’ union. 

He said BFA and FUB had applied to FIFA for the recognition of the new NDRC, making Botswana one of the three countries to achieve such feat globally.

FUB president, Onalethata Tshekiso said to date, football players were being exploited by some clubs, which were not fully compliant with the standardised contracts. 

“We still see teams promising players hefty salaries that were never paid,” he said. He also added that players were equally to blame as they open up to exploitation.

Despite manipulating players, Tshekiso said it was unfortunate to observe teams that owe players, passing club licensing and registered as compliant with the rules and regulations of the game. 

Tshekiso said the situation called for solidarity and that players must work together and fight for their welfare, survival and growth of the game

He said the congress was meant to introspect and address unfavourable conditions in their work space.

He said the gathering was also to give the union fresh guidance and direction toward approaching football issues. ENDS