Departed darts player owed 2014 incentives
Aseries of administrative shortfalls have cost former national darts team player, Badisa Mpejane his P3,500 share of the incentives from a tournament held in 2014.
Mpejane was part of the senior national team that competed at the Region 5 Federation Darts Championship held in Zimbabwe, but the team had to wait for seven years to receive their outstanding appearance and performance fees.
Mpejane who, unfortunately, passed on in 2014, was omitted in what the Botswana Darts Association (BODA) described as a ‘human error’. The team bagged a podium finish, scooping bronze overall after host, Zimbabwe and South Africa.
It began with errors as the then BODA administration did not submit a claim to the Botswana National Sport Commission (BNSC) upon their return from the Harare tournament. BODA secretary-general, Mothusi Moakofi said they missed the submission deadline in 2014 and were rejected by the BNSC following their reapplication three years late. BODA then sought to use the sum of P104,750 initially set aside for 2020-2021 national team activities to pay the debt.
“When the national team leaves, a federation should apply to the BNSC and when they come they should submit to the BNSC. But the then (BODA executive) committee did not move swiftly with their submission hence missed the BNSC deadline. This is why it took players seven years to be paid. It was just an administrative shortfall.
We reapplied in 2017 when I got into the office, but the BNSC said their annual budget would not be able to cover the incentives.” “We then took a decision last year, requesting that since there are no national team activities, the BNSC should allow us to use the national grant to pay the players from the 2014 tournament their dues. Mind you, national team incentives come from the BNSC and are not part of the grant, since 2014 this was the
only time where we had monies to spare since there were no activities last year,” Moakofi said.
He added upon the payment of the incentives last year, they realised that Mpejane had been erroneously omitted from the team list. But Moakofi has said a reapplication has been made to the BNSC for assistance.
“I was personally leading the whole process and it is unfortunate that we only became aware that Mpejane was not included in the list when the rest of the team received their dues.
We have written to the BNSC but they respond that they are running on a tight budget but promised to assist. I have Mpejane’s family contacts and we should be able to pass the funds to them when they are made available by BNSC,” Moakofi said.