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Harare Bureau
THE Deputy Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture Tabetha Kanengoni-Malinga yesterday urged different sporting disciplines to come forward with the challenges they are facing as the ministry seeks to improve the state of sport in the country. Speaking on the sidelines of a Press conference held yesterday in an effort by the ministry to assist motor racing driver, Axcil Jefferies raise funds for his races this year, Kanengoni-Malinga said this is just the starting point.
“In terms of mechanism in place this is something we are still working on, so I cannot give you exactly where we are at and what we are doing. But our open support we are giving right now is a start because we don’t want people to think that we don’t support junior sports so to speak or sports that are not as popular as football or cricket. So we are creating awareness as a ministry of these sport codes like motor sport, motocross and things like that.
“We are creating awareness, educating the people that there are sports like this, making them know that these are also sports that can represent the country the world over, bring us income as a country and help build our economy. Beyond awareness we will have to reveal our long term plans as we go along,” said Kanengoni-Malinga.
Kanengoni-Malinga said there is a need for the different sport codes to work hand in hand with the ministry so that they know the situation on the ground and find ways to assist.
“What I have realised is people assume that we know everything about the challenges they are facing. Maybe some of them don’t know that we have an open door policy. Maybe some of them think that our offices are not to be gone into but I want to encourage all those disciplines to come to us and talk to us.
“The ones that we are talking about here the motocross, motor racing, these are people that came to us spoke to us and convinced us that you know it’s something that is worth going into.
“We want to help them all, they must come to us, let’s talk, let’s sit down, discuss and let’s see what you are going through. We can’t assume that everything is okay, if you keep quiet we will think you are okay so speak up and come to us,” said Kanengoni-Malinga.
The Sport, Arts and Culture deputy minister said they are proud of Jefferies’ achievement and have engaged the government to assist the 19-year-old raise funds so that his dream can become a reality.
“As Ministry of Sport, Arts and Culture we have engaged the head-of-state and government and represented by the acting President honourable Joice Mujuru we met yesterday. And she has shown her support for Jefferies.
“We are looking at partnering the Ministry of Youth and the Ministry of Tourism. We believe that motorsport can generate a lot of income for our country.
“For the companies we want to come on board we really want them to know that investing in Axcil is investing in Zimbabwe Sport. We are going to be approaching them, we are going to be giving the details about the type of support that he needs.”
Online Reporter