05 Sep 2024

The cost of participating in the Constituency Sport Tournaments does not outweigh its benefits.

This was said Minister of Youth, Gender, Sport and Culture, Mr Tumiso Rakgare when responding to a question in Parliament recently. 

Minister Rakgare said the cost associated with football was over P3.86 million per cycle and the benefits included empowering youth by developing managerial and coordination skills, helping young people stay healthy, and thus reduced incidence of Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) and also kept youth meaningfully engaged.

He added that the programme was developed to achieve objectives in keeping youth meaningfully engaged, promoting mass participation in sport for leisure, fitness, social engagement and recreation and further curbed social ills amongst the unemployed out of school youth.

Minister Rakgare said the programme also promoted participation of young people in decision-making and created an opportunity for the youth to develop their skills and nurture their development in a structured manner.

“Therefore, the expected value of the programme was not meant to be economic, but rather social. 

The programme has so far attracted a good number of young people and on average 70 000 per cycle,” he said.

Mr Rakgare indicated that an impact study conducted in 2011 revealed that 70 per cent of people interviewed believed that the programme empowered the youth, 74 per cent believed it developed sport, 67 per cent believed that it kept youth from crime while 72 per cent agreed that it helped young people to stay healthy.

“The ministry therefore considers the programme to be a success in so far as its objectives are realised,” he said. 

However, he said the programme had never been reviewed since inception in 2008, adding an impact study was conducted in 2011. “Since there has been no review, there are no recommendations to implement,” he said.

The minister was responding to a question asked by Maun East MP, Mr Goretetse Kekgonegile who wanted to know the economic value of constituency culture and sport competitions in their current state. 

Mr Kekgonegile also asked the minister if he was aware that the cost of participating in the competitions as a group sport team, especially football, far outweighed benefits. 

The legislator also wanted to know when the programme was last reviewed, the findings and recommendations and the recommendations that had been implemented, among others. Ends