Chronicle Editor
Ricky Zililo, Senior Sports Reporter
BULAWAYO Amateur Swimming Board (Basa) has commended Bulawayo City Council (BCC) for maintaining swimming pools in the city, ensuring that the uptake of the sport increases.
The municipality runs City Pool, North End, Barham Green, Luveve, Barbourfields and Mpopoma swimming pools.
Basa has been using City Pool, which got a major facelift when the country hosted the 2014 Africa Union Sports Council Region 5 Games for local and national galas.
National schools’ competitions have also been held at City Pool, with local clubs also using the facility to train their swimmers.
North End was last used in 2014 for competitive events in the build-up to the AUSC Games when City Pool was closed for renovations and now continues to be used for recreational purposes as well as training by some clubs.
Basa chairperson, Phawulani Ngwenya, said: “BCC has done well to resuscitate swimming pools in the western suburbs and you can see kids enjoy going into water at top conditioned pools.
What the local authority has done is good because it reduces the number of deaths due to people drowning when we have more kids swimming at pools manned by professionals.
“I think what we need to work on as a nation is to get this infrastructure rehabilitated because it’s aging.
It will be good if corporates, local government and national sports associations get together and work around how we can resuscitate infrastructure at what we used to call Group A schools so that the sport continues to grow.
We need to build swimming pools at schools if the sport is to grow,” said Ngwenya.
He said schools are the best place to introduce swimming to children as a life skill.
“If children don’t know how to swim with the number of water bodies around, they risk drowning.
We encourage corporates to come in and assist like what’s happening in the developed world because sport now is a business and the more pools we have, the more athletes we develop,” said Ngwenya.
Basa is in the off-season and will resume its activities in August.
– @ZililoR
Online Reporter