13 Dec 2015

The Minister of Youth, Sports and Culture, Thapelo Olopeng, has encouraged youth to lead a culture of exercising.

Olopeng said this in an interview during his ministry’s national fitness day  in Gaborone. The ministry’s fitness day takes place in every second Friday (December 11) of every month.

Government departments attended the fitness day with different activities taking place.

Minister Olopeng said it was important to start exercising at an early stage, encouraging the youth to make it a culture for them to consistently workout.

“The reason I have passion with exercising is because I have been doing this for the past 30 years and still going on,” he said.

Olopeng further said there were lots of results to reap from constantly working-out, saying one of the good things was that working-out helped keep away non-communicable diseases.

He cited diseases such as diabetes and chronic diseases that could be easily kept at bay by exercising. “The reason why we launched this day was to target people who do not do any physical exercise, we are saying to those out there come out and exercise for free together,” he said.

Olopeng said the Ministry of Health was worried by an increase in non-communicable diseases, which seemed to have surpassed HIV/AIDS. He said Batswana did not live a healthy life due to lack of exercising, saying some were farmers who could not afford to eat meat from their livestock due to those diseases.

He also encouraged Batswana to take extra care during the festive season, saying it was during this season when most people ate and drank a lot.  He gave his word of advice to Batswana to be careful of what they ate and not to disregard exercising.

Kesebonye Lepono, a gym instructor at Master Gym commended the gesture made by the ministry for hosting such an event. 

He said Batswana were a people in need to be consistently reminded to engage in physical training.

He said this would help keep people from hospital who might be visiting for medical attention due to non-communicable diseases.

Lepono said he was happy the ministry invited him to come and help in instilling the culture of exercising into those who attended. He said most Batswana were struggling with such diseases due to lack of exercising and commended the ministry for the opportunity it provided to Batswana for free.

“I am happy to say some Batswana are availing themselves to train, this shall come handy for us as a nation so that we keep healthy and keep away from hospital where we waste money due to these non-communicable diseases when we can curb them by exercising,” he said. Ends