Premiership Sides Adopt New Licensing Regulations
Boitumelo Khutsafalo | Monday May 24, 2021 15:47
The regulations, which were drafted by the mother body, Botswana Football Association (BFA), will now become the new requirements for all the 16 clubs participating in the league next season.
BFL board chairperson, Aryl Ralebala said after the adoption, the BFA being the regulator, will now call each club to find out whether they are all ready to comply with the regulations. Ralebala also said Confederation of African Football (CAF) has given them four years to fully comply with the regulations.
He stated that they have since decided not to do radical transformations in the first year. “We will do step by step transformations until we are able to fully comply with all the regulations. In the first year, we have decided to pick low hanging fruits in the regulations that we know we can be able to achieve,” he said. Ralebala, however, said they will not compromise on issues of financial accountability from the first year.
He asserted that they will not tolerate situations where some fixtures are not honoured, because a club was not able to financially prepare for the match.
“Those are some of the things that we will not tolerate from the first year. We do not want to see a situation where fixtures are not honoured because a coach has not been paid or a club has failed to source money for fuel to travel to the venue.
Teams will have to comply with those regulations, but the BFA will call each club anytime from now so that everyone is on the same page,” he said. Ralebala explained that the licensing regulations are key especially in the case where they are now moving from a semi professional set up to a fully professional one.
He said under professional set up, there are certain requirements that each club has to follow. Some old Club Licensing requirements, which have since been nullified received criticism from some clubs. Some clubs felt part of the requirements were too stringent for local clubs who are currently struggling with finances.
Ralebala however said he felt the only problem with the previous arrangement was that clubs were not fully kept in the loop before the regulations came into force.
At the Saturday meeting, Premiership clubs were introduced to the new BFL chief executive officer (CEO), Solomon Ramochotlhwane who is expected to start his new job soon.