08 Jul 2013

Twenty football administrators from seven northern region committees have appreciated the basic administration course which was organised for them by Botswana Football Association (BFA) saying it was informative and will help them to run their affairs better.

One of the participants also the host region chairman, Jonas Ikgopoleng of Francistown Regional Football Association (FRAFA) said the five day course has opened their eyes on many things that they have been overlooking.

He highlighted that as regions they have always put the whole burden of sourcing funds on the hands of the governing body, the BFA and during the course they realised that it was actually their duty as office bearers to source their own funds by developing strategies on how to approach potential sponsors.

He noted that in many instances for those who tried to source sponsors have failed because they did not have strategic plans or even had any documented year plan of how they are going to use the funds if given to them.

In addition, he said as committees they have been running their offices in isolations without involving other stakeholders such as the local authorities.

Ikgopoleng said after the course they realised the need to engage with authorities and share with them issues so that together they can resolve matters within the regions and at the same time involve other stakeholders in order to attract potential sponsors.

Nhabe regional chairperson, Kgato Motai shared same sentiments with Ikgopoleng saying although they have known their responsibilities as leaders, they have not been practising good leadership skills thus failed to take charge where they supposed to due to inadequate information.

Motai cited that internal issues in the regions have been blown out of proportion because as leaders they failed to stand their ground in addressing the challenges and engaging the relevant people to solve them amicably.

He said issues therefore remained unresolved and resulted in conflicts within the offices always looked up to the BFA to intervene in issues that they could have resolved at regional level.

Furthermore, he mentioned that regions have always seen the media as an enemy when they reported on issues that were involving their offices instead of sharing with them as stakeholders for the purposes of coming up with a solutions.

He further noted that operating in isolations has not been doing them any good because parents within the communities were no longer willing to release their children to engage in sports.

Motai said during the course they also realised that if they were engaging the communities and the media through information sharing bad publicity could have been avoided.

 The participating regions were FRAFA, Nhabe, Chobe, Central, Boteti and Tswapong as well as Phikwe.ENDS