The ugly picture of the budget cut

Limba Mupetami



The most stinging blow came on Wednesday when the national budget was tabled.

No one can dispute that the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic has created unprecedented challenges for Namibia. Faced with a constrained budget, the ministry of finance has had to make difficult decisions when allocating money to the various ministries.

The ministry of sport and youth and national service was allocated a total of N$279 million for the 2021/22 financial year.

This is a reduction of about N$27 million from the N$306 million the ministry received in the previous year. Year after year, this keeps happening.

I think at this point in time Covid-19 is being used as a scapegoat to get away from some duties.

This, however, shouldn’t be the case. Sport is picking up. The Brave Warriors are busy with the Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers, the Brave Gladiators are gearing for a friendly against Angola. They intend to use the friendly to prepare for the Cosafa Women’s championship as well as the Afcon Women’s Championships.

The national cricket team, the Eagles, have an October World Cup to prepare for, Namibian athletes are set on competing in the Tokyo Olympics as well as the Paralympic Games.

The under-20 rugby team has the Barthes Trophy to prepare for – just to name a few – and here we are, sitting with no money to cater for the needs of all these athletes.

I think our priorities are wrong. That’s just my opinion.

At a time when athletes need to be pushed to give hope to a seemingly depressed Namibia, we further pull them back but at the same time hope for the best.

Okay, at the moment schools are doing everything they can to keep athletes busy, with tight budgets and with the help of parents. Most had to entirely cut out some programmes, even though it is not a choice schools want to make.

I think for the senior athletes, things continue to look grimmer. Athletes are owed rewards money. Every time there is an enquiry made on this, “things are at an advance state” is the answer. How are they going to pay these deserving athletes? Some who have already started preparing for the Olympic Games.

Talking about the Olympic Games – where will the preparation money come from? Is it too early to press the panic button?

I think the Namibian government takes on more than it can handle. This is what I mean: You have the Khomasdal Stadium which the likes of former footballer Collin Benjamin is trying to lease in order to build a state-of-the-art football facility – he is not getting anywhere with this proposal. Imagine the number of athletes who can benefit from this?

Why doesn’t the City of Windhoek avail the stadium or land to those who want to better situations for the rest? Look at the Independence Stadium and the state that it is in at the moment. It is just a sorry state of affairs, year after year.

I think the sport industry really needs a serious overhaul. We need a plan on how to make it appealing to sponsors. Not just MTC. Nedbank, Bank Windhoek and Namibian Breweries. The likes of Pick n Pay, Spar and Woermann Brock. It should be a duty for companies to take a sports code under their wing.

Because if you don’t, only time will tell how this sport budget cut will manifest itself in the long run.



- limba@namibiansun