adminon Saturday with the old and new members in attendance.
Fredrick Ndlovu, who retained his position as the national association’s president, leads the new executive and he said they are going to discuss several issues pertaining to the sport.
“The first item on the programmes is the handover-takeover where the new members will be introduced to the executive because there are some who were newly elected and some who retained their posts.
“The second issue is the clarification of roles and duties for each member.
“We are also going to discuss the 2013 calendar of events and the Great Zimbabwe Talent Identification programme,” said Ndlovu.
Another major issue to be discussed is the participation of the youth and junior teams in the continental championships scheduled for different countries.
The first competition, the Youth Boys championships, are set to run from January 20 to February 1 in Algeria while the Junior Men championships will start on February 28 to March 10 in Tunisia.
The Junior Women championships will be in Nigeria from March 11 to 20 and the Junior women will be staged in Egypt from March 23 to April 1.
The top two winners in these categories will progress to the World Championships to be held later this year.
However, for Zimbabwe, it remains to be seen if they will be able to send the teams having automatically qualified to compete at these events after the Zone Six championships that were supposed to act as qualifiers for the continental competitions were cancelled.
Most member-countries did not confirm their participation in the event on the zonal competition.
Only South Africa, Zimbabwe and Malawi, who were suppose to host the event, had confirmed and they were then allowed to progress to the next stage. But it seems for local teams it may be just another chance going down the drain, as the national association is yet to map the way forward to raise funds for the trips.
Ndlovu said they were working on the possibility of sending a team but with the first tournament’s dates fast approaching it’s going to be difficult.
“We are working on the possibility of sending teams. Malawi was very cheaper.
“The cost of going to Malawi with four teams is now the cost of taking one team to each competition.
“When you travelling you don’t just go there to be tourists, so we have to assess the teams according to their performance because the idea is to go there and win,” said Ndlovu.
Ndlovu said the late announcement of the dates for the continental tournaments has also affected their preparations.
Online Reporter