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Sports Reporter

THE Sports Commission will today hold their first quarterly meeting with the national sport associations at their offices at the National Sports Stadium to appraise the latter on governance and other related issues pertaining to their operations.

Sports Commission corporate communications officer, Tirivashe Nheweyembwa, said they will deliberate on various issues concerning sport.

“All national associations are expected to attend this meeting as this will set the tone with regards to how sport programmes are going to be implemented this year.

“It will also give us an opportunity to take stock of the progress being made by the national associations to decentralise their structures to district and ward level as directed in February this year,” said Nheweyembwa.

Nheweyembwa said there will be presentations by Nicoz Diamond on sports accident insurance cover.

“Another critical facet of sport that will be covered is sport accidents insurance cover. Nicoz Diamond will present this topic which is relatively new to this country.

“Sports accidents are quite common. However, as a nation we are challenged in that there are now schemes which cover athletes.

“In most instances the athletes had their promising careers cut short and they did not receive any form of compensation from their clubs because no insurance cover was put in place for them thus leaving the athletes to ponder the next move.

“This therefore underscores the importance of the presentation that Nicoz Diamond are going to be making,” said Nheweyembwa.

The Zimbabwe Olympic Committee are also expected to make a presentation on road to Rio 2016 summer Olympics, while ZIFA will take the delegates through their grassroots development programme.

The country’s supreme sport body is also going spell out the demands of their Act with respect to what the national associations should submit to the Commission.

Recently seven associations were sanctioned for failing to comply with the provisions of the Commission’s Act.

Four were given warnings while three — Zimbabwe Handball Federation, Zimbabwe Wushu Federation and Zimbabwe Boxing had their executives suspended for two years.

The Sports Commission has indicated that they are going to appoint interim committees for the three associations.

Sports Commission director-general, Charles Nhemachena, said they already have the names to be submitted to the Minister of Sport and Recreation, Makhosini Hlongwane.

“Recommendations will be made to the Minister next week. We already have names we are going to recommend, but we can’t talk of names because they are recommendations to be made,” said Nhemachena.