Badminton inherits P100,000 debt
Larona Makhaiza | Saturday July 2, 2022 06:00
This emerged during a press briefing held at the Stay Bridge Golf View Suites recently. BBA president, Moses Macheke said badminton has been in a bad state in recent years.
He said the code has remained stagnant compared to other codes such as athletics and football. Macheke said his new committee, elected into office last month, looks to turn the situation around.
He said they found a P100,000 debt and that will make it difficult for the committee to run the affairs of the association. "We took over a debt of close to P100,000, and that’s something we will struggle with as we have got no sponsors as of now. We do not really have a big budget as we have received a grant of as little as P200,000,” Macheke said.
He said COVID-19 impacted adversely on the operations of BBA, as some competitions like BISA had to be halted. The BISA competitions are organised to promote sports development among children. “COVID-19 did lead to the BBA having fewer games in place as the association had to tread carefully and adhere to protocols and this was one of the big setbacks that made the BBA observe a decline in the number of clubs in badminton.
This resulted in the slow pace of development structures because now the team does not even have Under-17 or Under-12,” Macheke said. Although the state of badminton in the country is not pleasing, Macheke's committee has plans to revive the sport. “Now that the pandemic is seemingly under control, the BBA has put in place a plan to bring more games to the people through hosting more matches than before and do engage more relevant stakeholders,” he said. Macheke said the association expects to build positive stakeholder relationships. As part of measures to revive badminton, Macheke said they have a programme dubbed 'Shuttle Time Programme' that will be used to help with development plans.
He said they would soon embark on a journey to sign a Memorandum of Agreement with private schools so that the institutions include badminton in their curriculum, as a way of promoting the sport.
On August 27 and 28, the BAA will launch the Shuttle Time Programme in Maun. “The association also looks at improving the governance and administration (constitution review) and then engage the clubs on the constitution review in July so that they are up to date with the document,” he said. The BBA is set to host its first tournament of the year in early August and have other games before the Botswana International Games that are set to take place in November. Badminton will have three court officials (one umpire and two line judges) representing the country at Birmingham, Commonwealth Games this month (July).