24 Feb 2014

Minister of Youth, Sports and Culture, Mr Shaw Kgathi says he is unable to appreciate what MP for Shoshong, Mr Phillip Makgalemele means by “sports health policy”.

However he said if the MP was referring to a policy specifically focusing on the role that sport could play in the national economy, his ministry had no plans of developing such a policy.

He said this was because his ministry had already developed a comprehensive national sport and recreation policy for Botswana of 2001 which among others focused on the health benefits of participation in sport.

Mr Kgathi said the policy recognised the “savings in health care” that could be derived from participating in sport and assigned responsibilities to various stakeholders to achieve the aspiration of using “sport as a means of enhancing preventive and curative health measures.”

The minister stated that in that connection, developing a separate sport health policy would also be tantamount to unnecessary fragmentation of guiding instruments which may affect implementation.

Mr Makgalemele had asked him to state any plans if any of developing a sports health policy given the potential savings sport could make to the economy and if none what were the reasons. Ends