21 Nov 2013

The Minister of Youth, Sports and Culture has said delays in payments to teams that participate in constituency tournaments were mainly due to lapses as his ministry moved to the old system to the new one outsourced to BotswanaPost.

He said his ministry had placed Youth Empowerment Scheme graduated in various constituencies to monitor programme implementation, adding they will assist in monitoring registration of teams and groups as well as processing of payments.

Minister Kgathi said negotiations were on-going with the Botswana Post with a view of coming up with alternative ways of speeding up the payments. He said this includes introduction of vouchers for immediate payment to teams after their competitions and decentralization of processing of payments to their regions.

Minister Kgathi said decentralization would be helpful as all payments are currently sent to headquarters for processing. He said he is aware that delayed payments can contribute to splits and indebtedness adding however that in their observations splits are brought by greed and dishonesty amongst the team.

He was responding to Francistown South MP, Mr Wynter Mmolotsi who wanted to know why it takes long for teams participating in Constituency tournaments and groups in the Arts and Music Competitions to be paid after competing.

MP Mmolotsi also wanted to know whether such delays contribute to splits and indebtedness. Ends