05 May 2013

The Botswana National Sports Council (BNSC), which has been beset by lack of sufficient funds to support its affiliate codes, has received supplementary funding from the government to finance its affiliates.

BNSC chairperson, Solly Reikeletseng said this in an interview during the BNSC awards nominees announcement in Gaborone on May 3. 

He confirmed that they had struggled with funding affiliates over the past year, but said the problem has been solved.

“We have managed to solicit funding from the recent national budget, which recently effected with the commencement of the new financial year in April.  We have managed to increase most sport codes’ funding, most by as much as 50 per cent,” Reikeletseng said. 

He said that they have a formula to finance their sporting codes, and respond to the individual needs of each affiliate.

“Football will always have the biggest funding because they are the biggest code with so many people across the country involved in the sport.  Other bodies get financial support according to their size as well. 

But, we gauge how the funds are used, we audit, and for example, if we give you funds and you fail to adequately use them, it would be hard to convince us to increase your funding the next time,” he said. 

Reikeletseng said that his committee had done well since taking over the baton from the Daniel Tau-led group at Palapye in 2011.

“Tau’s committee had done well in implementing Vision 2012.  We have now come up with the 2018 programme, increased funding for the BNSC and its affiliates, worked on sports development, and we have seen how sport is growing, as evidenced by international recognition for our athletes,” he said.

The 2013 awards, slated for June 8, will once more be held in partnership with Broadcasting Services, and the departments’ representative, Vusa Ziga said they were pleased with the partnership.

“The Department of Broadcasting Services has been staging these awards in partnership with BNSC for the past four years.  We are both happy and excited with improvements in quality of the competition in various categories and the level of organisation of the event,” he said.

But Ziga bemoaned the challenge in attracting sponsorship for the event despite what he termed “qualitative improvements” in the manner the awards are staged.

He called on sports bodies and businesses to come together to develop sports programmes of different formats for airing on national television, saying as a department they wish to see sports content contributing a big percentage of local programming.

As always, awards will be presented for Junior Female Sportsperson, Junior Male Sportsperson, Sports Administrator, Non-Citizens, Team of the Year, Sports Code, Best Executed Development Programme, Umpire/Referee, Coach, different media categories, as well as the prestigious Sports Woman, Sports Man, and the biggest prize of the Sportsperson of the Year.

Olympic silver medalist, Nijel Amos will be the favourite to take over the latter award from fellow Olympian Amantle Montsho, who dominated last year’s awards on the back of her 2011 success on the international athletic circuit. ENDS