01 Oct 2019

Botswana National Sport Commission’s (BNSC) leadership is committed to ensuring that participation of people living with disabilities in sport is enjoyable.

BNSC chief executive officer, Falcon Sedimo, told a recent national disability sport pitso in Gaborone that one such measure was that paralympics would use sport facilities for free.

“We have agreed that as a way of encouraging people with disabilities to participate in sport, we will avail the facilities to you for free, except for utilities such as water and electricity, which is just a small amount,” he said.

Sedimo also said in the Botswana Games, they were able to accommodate athletics for the visually impaired, adding that it was in fora such as the pitso to come up with suggestions on how the necessary equipment ould be made.

He urged the public and private sector to come on board and share ideas on where and how to make improvements and to help BNSC with conditions that would enable it to accommodate other forms of disability.

“One of the aims of the sport pitso is to ensure that we help people with disabilities, in line with Article 30 of the UN Convention on the Rights of people with disabilities. We recognise the rights of persons with disabilities to take part on an equal basis with others in cultural life,” he said.

 A member of the Paralympic Association of Botswana (PASSOBO), Carinah Rahube, said PASSOBO would participate in Tokyo 2020 and preparations had been on-going since last year.

Rahube said they managed to send a team to the World Paralympic Trials in Dubai and there were two visually impaired athletes who automatically qualified for Tokyo 2020.

She said they were sending three more paralympics to Dubai for the Tokyo 2020 trials next month. ENDS