Olympics push sports budget to P126m
Calistus Kolantsho | Friday April 9, 2021 14:19
Besides the Olympics, the AUSC Region 5 and Botswana Games have contributed to the increase. However, the budget is yet to be approved. BNSC acting chief executive officer (CEO), Tuelo Serufho said the exact allocations for the budget have not been made. “When the Minister was presenting to the Parliamentary Committee of Supply, he was proposing a figure of around P126 Million. We do not know what the breakdown is but we suspect the figure includes Games such as Botswana, AUSC Region 5 and Olympics,” he said.
Serufho added the budget for the 2021-2022 financial year would most likely be more or less the same as that of 2020-2021. The grant allocation for the 2020-2021 financial year was P100,700,000.
Meanwhile, affiliates are feeling the full weight of the financial pinch due to COVID-19 after the government decided against releasing the outstanding balance from last year’s grant.
In March, the BNSC wrote to National Sport Associations informing them that funds will not be released, except for recurrent expenses. Botswana Chess Federation’s (BCF) public relations officer, Kutlwano Tatolo said they were due to hold an Annual General Meeting (AGM), but are in limbo. BNSC announced that it had been affected by the government reprioritisation exercise, to the extent that it would not receive the balance of its grant in the current financial year unless for costs relating to operations and unavoidable programmes or activities.
“We, therefore, wish to inform all National Sport Associations (NSA) that the Commission would not be able to honour any request in March 2021 even if the NSA still has a positive balance.
This is in the exception of requests for unavoidable costs such as those of rentals, salaries and utilities,” reads a savingram from BNSC dated March 1, 2021. The BNSC said given the fact that the Commission would not be allowed to carry its 2020-2021 grant balance to 2021-2022 conversely NSAs could not carry any balances forward. Tatolo said they had a balance from the past financial year, but would not be allowed to carry it forward.
“This could be the end of BCF, but we are trying as much as possible to come up with a plan. We are behind in terms of preparing for elections and our members are even wondering if we want to stay in the office indefinitely,” she said.
Tatolo said by now they should have announced a date and venue for the Ordinary General Meeting (OGM), where a new committee would be elected. She said they are trying to come up with a way to hold the meeting. She added that by end of this week, they expect to announce a plan. Tatolo said the initial plan was to have elections before the end of May.
Serufho told Mmegi Sport that they wrote in the guidelines that meetings and workshops are suspended. He said they also wrote that if it is an elective general assembly and not possible for it to be held virtually, the NSA is allowed to request a special dispensation from BNSC.
“If it is a face-to-face meeting, government protocols have to be followed. We have also informed NSAs that as the financial year starts, we are going to review the situation but we are still waiting for confirmation of funding so that we could start appropriating funds to NSAs,” Serufho said.
He said they do not have money to fund face-to-face meetings. Serufho said they do not want NSAs to break their constitutions and therefore, encourage the holding of virtual meetings.
Serufho dismissed reports that the BNSC would cease funding NSAs.
“Our mandate is sport development and it is not possible for them not to fund development. We would continue with requesting funding for NSAs. Going forward, when you go for international competitions, we look into development programmes and if it is not there we refuse to fund,” he said.
Furthermore, BNSC took back unused grants from NSAs. Botswana Netball Association (BONA) secretary-general, Ntebo Maplanka said some of their grants were retained while they were in the process of renovating netball courts. BONA was granted P900,000 and had spent P764,280.19.
Regarding the new arrangement on funding AGMs, Maplanka said the meetings are under non-avoidable activities. “No constitution should be violated. BNSC has allowed all elective AGMs to take place and they would be funding them. We sent a request and BNSC responded in the positive. Even our request for funding has been approved,” Maplanka said.