Ministry rejects athletics' grant request
Calistus Kolantsho | Friday July 17, 2020 07:58
Botswana Athletics Association (BAA) received the bad news last week, although vice president-administration, Oabona Theetso said there were no reasons for the rejection.
“The letter did not give reasons, but they informed us that our application was not successful,” Theetso said.
Botswana National Sport Commission (BNSC) technical director, Bobby Gaseitsiwe said the request was rejected as some athletes were going to benefit from other schemes.
“The guidelines state that we could only fund professionals who lost income due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. We are not going to fund professionals who are under the BNSC Special Fund or Botswana National Olympic Committee (BNOC) Solidarity Fund. Double dipping is not allowed,” Gaseitsiwe said.
Meanwhile, World Athletics (WA) and the International Athletics Foundation (IAF) has announced that 193 athletes from 58 member federations would be offered one-time grants of $3,000 (P30,000) through an Athlete Welfare Fund announced in April to help support professional athletes experiencing financial hardship due to the pandemic.
Initially totalling $500,000 (P5million) when its creation was announced on April 28, generous contributions since have made $600,000 (P6 million) ultimately available to athletes in need.
The IAF received 261 eligible applications by the May 31 deadline. These applications were evaluated by the IAF to ensure they met the eligibility criteria, under the oversight of an expert working group chaired by World Athletics president, Sebastian Coe.
To be eligible athletes were supposed to have qualified for selection for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games (by entry standard), had to be able to demonstrate a justifiable welfare need through significant loss of income in 2020 compared to 2019, and must never have had an anti-doping violation.
Theetso said the WA would pay the funds directly to the athletes.
“WA would then forward us proof of payment. The payments are made out according to categories and the highest paid athlete would receive around $4,000 (P40,000). Olympic qualification is not considered. As we speak, Galefele Moroko has qualified for Olympics, but she is not an elite athlete,” Theetso said.