AfricaPress-Tanzania: THE government has tasked the Tanzania Football Federation (TFF) to be serious with the grassroots level development programmes so as to nurture potential future talents.
This was said by the Minister for Information, Culture, Arts and Sports Harrison Mwakyembe who insisted that the country has many talented youths who simply need to be given a platform to shine.
“As government, we spend nearly 3bn/- annually to run Inter Primary and Secondary School games as an endeavour to promote and develop sports talent from the grassroots level. “Surprisingly, despite seeing extraordinary talents from the children who partake in the competitions, they have nowhere to go and most of them end up abandoning their skills due to lack of support,” he said.
He went on: “Our Under-17 national team is one of the best in Africa and at one point, we went to India for a special tournament where we performed well. But, the question is, where do these boys go afterwards?”
He added that it could have been promising for the country’s big clubs to be on the forefront in picking some of these youthful players and include them in their teams before polishing their skills rather than just keeping eyes on foreign players.
In retrospect, Mwakyembe pointed out that his ministry has already started talking with owners of sport venues in different parts of the country on how they can cooperate to upgrade them.
“As you know, most of the playing venues are owned by the ruling party CCM. For them to give us mandate to take care of these venues and concerning payments, we will discuss on it. “The good thing is that most regions are ready to do that and for instance, Tabora region has already shown strong interest to work with us and we are grateful for that,” said him.
He then challenged TFF leaders to always thrive to leave behind a mark of upgrading at least one or two playing venues when their working tenure expires so as to be remembered thereafter.
“TFF should enact policies meant to facilitate the renovation of playing fields as they seek to work at the federation, they need to make pledge that they will accomplish to renovate a certain ground even one venue is not a bad thing. “We want people to say that the departing TFF leadership has upgraded perhaps a venue in Tanga and so on in order to promote sports in the country,” noted Mwakyembe.
Concerning the issue of boxing, the minister narrated that apart from bringing a modern boxing ring in Mbeya, he is thinking to invite boxing coaches from outside the country to train the domestic ones.
“By doing this, I was to leave something to the youths of Mbeya who have shown their love in the sport of boxing and I am planning to bring one more boxing ring for them,” he disclosed.
