26 Mar 2014

The Botswana African Youth Games Organising Committee (BAYGOC) continues to engage all the relevant stakeholders to ensure that everything would be in place during the African Youth Games billed for May 21 in Gaborone.

Tuelo Serufho, the BAYGOC chief executive officer, said during a press conference in Gaborone on March 25 that he had no doubt that the Botswana Power Corporation (BPC) took keen interest in the games and therefore promised to eliminate power cuts during the showpiece.

Serufho said much was at stake in that power cuts might cause havoc and embarrassment to the nation as many people were expected to watch the games on television.

Therefore, he said, the committee was exploring other options for a back-up plan because electricity shortage would affect many dimensions from television signals to scoring computers. He dismissed reports that trouble looming at BAYGOC secretariat and hence the recent resignation of staff members.

He said they had been a few resignations due to different reasons, which included lack of job security at BAYGOC as the posts were temporary because they were created to facilitate the games.

When Botswana won the bid to host the games last year, it meant that the committee had 14 months to prepare for the games unlike in other instances where countries had had four years to prepare for a sporting showpiece.

Therefore, he said, the secretariat had to employ officers on a contractual basis, some of whom felt there was no job security and the fact that they resigned to join other organisations was normal and logical.

To avoid pressure created by resignations, some stakeholders and sponsors seconded their employees to BAYGOC to keep the organisational work ongoing. Serufho said BAYGOC had more than 2 000 volunteers who would be categorised according to different cadres.

The volunteers would be trained and would, in turn, train others in collaboration with Sports Volunteer Movement. Ends