AfricaPress-Tanzania: THE government has drummed for transparency and accountability among organs tasked to run sports in order to attract more investment from private sectors.
This has been urged by the Deputy Minister for Information, Culture, Arts and Sports Abdallah Ulega who noted that the private sector’s investment in sports is very important for its development.
“I understand that people from the private sector are willing to venture in sports and render a helping hand but there are things which usually hold them back. “Let me urge all sport governing bodies in the country to always do their works in transparent manner and thrive for accountability which in turn will attract private sectors to be part and parcel of sport development in the country,” Ulega said.
He added: “When people bring their money to support a particular sport discipline, their main objective is to see fruits emerging from their investments hence any sort of mismanagement of their money prevents them from coming back.
“This is why private sectors are sometimes hard to venture in sports due to lack of transparency among bodies verified to manage various sport disciplines across the country.
“As government, we encourage all the entities tasked to overlook the day-to-day progress of sports including the National Sports Council (NSC) to be transparent and committed so as to win more private sector investors in sports,” Ulega said.
“Money is always there. Directors and leaders of various private sectors are sport loving people, who are ready to invest only if the level of transparency and accountability will be uplifted.
“These guys are always searching for places to invest their money to fulfill corporate social investment but, whenever they try to come aboard, they usually make a U-turn due to poor management,”he said.
Recently, Ulega called upon schools in the country to take sport activities seriously to nurture different talents to be later channeled in various sports disciplines.
“It is sad to learn that some schools allow children to move randomly during the sport lessons without letting them actively participate, something which is not encouraged. “We will keenly look into this issue to identify such schools which deliberately skip sport lessons by considering them as unfruitful to their learners,” he said.
He added that the target of the government is to bring back glory old days when schools were the backbone for producing competitive athletes who used to excel in various national and international sport events.
