Teachers to receive long overdue sports payments
Calistus Kolantsho | Monday October 28, 2019 13:21
According to a savingram from the department, the Ministry of Basic Education (MoBE) has managed to secure funds for athletics allowances.
The department said it was working around the clock to transfer the funds to Botswana Integrated Sport Association (BISA) and Botswana Primary Schools Sports Association (BOPSSA) bank accounts.
“We would like to assure officials that they would be paid by BISA and BOPSSA once funds have been credited into their accounts,” reads the letter.
BISA public relations officer, Letsweletse Jonas said the arrears are for athletics money that is owed from athletics competitions. He said P11.6 million goes to BISA officials who handled athletics assignments.
He explained that for stage one of the competition, officials are paid P500 per day, while for stage two, it is P600 per day and those who officiated in stage three are paid P700 per day while P800 per day is received at stage four.
Jonas said the ministry is paying athletics first adding that the bill for ball sports runs up to P17 million. BOPSSA president, Busani Segweni said they are excited about the decision to pay. He said the total amount for BOPSSA officials’ stands at P5.5 million.
“The payments are long overdue because the competitions were held in March and payment is being done in November. We lost quite a number of teachers who were good in sport because they realised that they were not benefiting anything from sport,” he said.
Segweni said even those who stayed and continued with sport, they felt that BOPSSA leadership was not doing enough to sort out the issue of payments.
“It was not fair to us as leadership. We appreciate what the ministry has done and by next week we would be paying the teachers,” he added.