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Joseph Muchechetere

Ellina Mhlanga Sports Reporter
THE Sport and Recreation Commission are this week expected to conduct interviews for the post of director-general after they re-advertised the post last month.

Having first advertised the post in April and subsequently held interviews, the Commission were forced to re-advertise the post last month after the candidates they had short-listed for the position failed to meet the supreme sports body’s expectations.

There has been no substantive director-general at the Commission since Charles Nhemachena’s retirement in May last year.

Joseph Muchechetere, who was among the candidates interviewed in April, has been the acting director-general.

Sports Commission board chairman, Edward Siwela yesterday told The Herald that they are finalising the short-list of candidates for interviews.

“We have received applications and we are currently preparing for interviews. So we are in a position where we are short-listing candidates, hoping that we should actually be able to conduct interviews sometime this week.

“We will finalise the short-listing tomorrow (today) and then we will invite those people for interviews. We plan to conduct the interviews this week,” Siwela said.

The new director-general shall be responsible for among other duties providing overall leadership to the day to day operations of the commission, develop the commission’s strategic and business plans, obtaining board approval and leading strategy execution in order to achieve the commission’s strategic goals.

“I think as the SRC board cognisant of the expectations of Government envisaged in the soon to be the Act, the public entities corporate governance bill, we would like somebody who not only understands sport but is able to turn around the fortunes of SRC.

“We need somebody with a business track record. So we need a balance between an understanding of sport and a track record in running successful business.

“Because one of the things that you may realise is that government would like to see these public entities, which include parastatals as SRC, regulators such as SRC, it would like to see them self-sustainable, reducing if not stopping all together appeals to government for funding.

“So we need to see a situation where in Zimbabwe as elsewhere in the world, we can see sport being run as business, being sustainable, being able to raise sufficient funds for the running of the business of sport and being less dependent on the fiscus.

“And for that it is inadequate that somebody brings sporting experience alone. It is important that they have actually run business successfully at a senior level. So to us those are the attributes that really will far outweigh everything else,” said Siwela.

The successful candidate will formulate organisational policies and recommending them to the board for approval. And will also be responsible for preparing budgets and submitting them for board approval.