Sports Ministry Had No Control Over Any Sporting Facility
The Ministry of Youth, Sport, Arts and Recreation has revealed that it had no control over public sporting facilities until last year when some facilities were transferred over to it by the Ministry of Local Government and Public Works.
This came out in the Senate on Thursday last week when the Minister responsible for the portfolio, Kirsty Coventry, appeared before members of the Senate.
Senator Tsitsi Muzenda asked Coventry what the government’s policy was regarding the condition of different sporting facilities, with some of them now in a state of decay and dilapidation. Muzenda said:
For example, I am looking at the Chitungwiza Aquatic Complex, Magamba Hockey Stadium and other sports facilities, especially golf courses which are now in a sorry state.
It seems a lot of these infrastructures have been neglected for a very long time, which is unfortunate because a lot of money has been put into that infrastructure.
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In her response, Coventry said all public sporting facilities were under the care of the ministry of local government until last year. She said:
In terms of golf courses, none of them falls under our Ministry, so, unfortunately, we have no jurisdiction to step in and help.
Most of the golf courses are either run privately or through councils. As I said, we have no jurisdiction over that.
In terms of the infrastructure, as a Ministry, we never had any infrastructure falling under us until last year when the Aquatic Centre, the National Sports Stadium and the Hockey Stadium were transferred over to us from the Local Government. Still today, that has not been completed.
There are specific departments that sit within the Local Government that need to be transferred over to us.
Those three (Aquatic Centre, the National Sports Stadium and the Hockey Stadium) will be the focus of our Ministry to make sure that we get adequate funding to get them back to state of the art. It will take a bit of time.
For the other sports infrastructure in and around community centres, we have put a policy in place with our youth interaction centres where we are working with communities to identify spaces that have sports and art centres.
