22 May 2016

Botswana National Olympic Committee (BNOC) president, Negroes Kgosietsile has called on BNOC affiliates to be compliant with good governance so as to attract sponsors and quality volunteers. 

Addressing affiliates at the Ordinary General Assembly on May 21 in Gaborone, he stated that some sport codes lacked good governance, which resulted in them being in the media for the wrong reasons. 

With the 2008-2016 strategic plan coming to an end this year,  he said BNOC would engage affiliates to review the last strategy success and challenges. 

The president also urged national federations to align and focus their principles and programmes to Botswana Long Term Athletes Development Framework. 

The framework calls on codes to develop athletes at a young age before exposing them to international competitions, he said. 

“The framework is there for sport codes to utilise and it is through such frameworks that government will be willing to invest in sport because there is a structure in place,” he added.

In addition, Kgosietsile pointed out that doping in sport was a crisis as it tarnishes nations adding that the International Olympics Committee(IOC) was putting stringent measures in place to punish doping athletes.This past week, he said IOC confirmed adverse results from 31 athletes from the 2008 Beijing Olympics, which subsequently resulted in them strapped off the medals. He said they were planning to establish an interim National Anti-Doping Agency, which would ensure testing athletes in and out of competition. 

BNOC chief executive officer ,Tuelo Serufho indicated that they were prioritising Rio 2016 athletes to be tested for doping so that before the competition in August, they would have at least tested once. However, he noted that with the South African testing lab temporarily closed, Doha was the nearest.

 Serufho further said BNOC was in constant communication with the Ministry of Health regarding the Zika virus outbreak in Brazil. He said they would make call on what to do depending on the advice of experts when the  Ri0 2016 games gets. 

He said they would give athletes the discretion to choose whether they want to go to Brazil amid fears of the Zika virus. ENDS