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Sports Reporter
THE Sports Commission yesterday said they have met with the Zimbabwe Aquatic Union regarding the concerns that were raised by some stakeholders over the way they are running their affairs.

Sports Commission corporate communications officer, Tirivashe Nheweyembwa, said they were in the process of going through the submissions.

“We can confirm the receipt of the ZAU stakeholders’ concerns and upon that we went ahead and held a meeting with ZAU and we are now at an advanced stage of resolving the issues.

‘‘We received the issues on September 5 and wrote to ZAU on September 18. We met ZAU on October 22, 2019. We met them and they further made submissions in writing.

“At the moment that’s what we are still going through and once we are done we will make it known,” said Nheweyembwa.
The stakeholders are accusing ZAU’s leadership of manipulating the constitution to further their interests.

The leaders are also being accused of prejudicing athletes, administrators and coaches with some of their boardroom moves. The stakeholders have also accused SRC for failing to deal with their concerns in the past.

“Many of us now fear that this is a protected sport because it is the sport in which the current Minister (Kirsty Coventry) excelled. If it wasn’t, surely, you would have dealt with it by now as you have done with other sports.
‘‘The things that are coming out in those sport codes are the same as what is happening with the Union.

“Things such as ignoring what the constitutions say, unilateral changes to the rules to make them better able to deal with people that question how they work, dishonesty when it comes to returns submitted to the SRC, selection of swimmers for tours with no objective criteria so that the best swimmers are not automatically selected etc.

“Most recently, ZAU has caused the re-naming of our provincial association to Harare Amateur Swimming Board.
“We know that the reason it did this and made it look urgent was to deal with difficult legacy issues that it’s meddling had caused in the Mashonaland Amateur Swimming Board,” reads part of the letter to SRC.