Sport Integrity Bill to fight drug abuse
THE Government is confident that the Sport Integrity Bill, to be tabled before Parliament this year, will help curb the scourge of substance abuse and ensure Zimbabwe’s athletes practice clean sport.
Sport, Recreation, Arts and Culture Deputy Minister Emily Jesaya underscored Zimbabwe’s commitment in joining the global and continental efforts to ensure the country is among those nations promoting safe and clean sport across its various disciplines.
Jesaya, speaking on the sidelines of a High-level forum on Anti-doping in sport in Africa in Accra, noted that the Bill would pave the way for national legislation to deal with issues of doping and any substance abuse by sportspersons.
The day-long forum in Accra brought together high-ranking sports ministers, policy experts, anti-doping agencies, and other stakeholders from across the African continent and beyond.
Jesaya was joined by the director for Sport and Recreation in her Ministry, Eugenia Chidhakwa, who was among the experts, attending the day-long forum.
The forum aims to address pressing challenges and promote high level collaborative efforts at policy level in the fight against doping in sports.
It is also looking to serve as a catalyst where African nations can work together to preserve the fairness, integrity and spirit of sports while promoting the health and well-being of athletes.
Jesaya also indicated that; “Member States were asked to put in place national anti-doping organisations and appropriate legislative frameworks that guide existence and functioning of sports development and funding institutions initiatives.
“And for us in Zimbabwe these are the areas which the Sport Integrity Bill that will be tabled in parliament, will seek to address,’’ she said.
The forum in Accra is also premised on the African Union’s newly adopted policy framework for the sustainable development of Sport in Africa (2023-2033), which outlines polices and strategies and provides guidance on the position of the continent on anti-doping matters.
“Zimbabwe is a signatory to the UNESCO convention on anti-doping and we were tasked to go and develop national anti-doping organisations in our countries so that we promote clean sport and we are giving feedback in terms of where we are as countries.
“As far as Zimbabwe is concerned, we had already made steps and if you followed the address that was made by His Excellency the President of the Republic of Zimbabwe during the official opening of parliament, he highlighted a number of bills that we are supposed to work on so that they can be tabled in parliament and one the bills is the Sport Integrity Bill that encompasses this national anti-doping organisation that we are supposed to come up with which promotes clean sport, so that our athletes will not have challenges when they want to participate at international stages,’’ Jesaya said.
After her engagements at the anti-doping forum, Jesaya then visited Team Zimbabwe at the Games Village and had dinner with them before boosting the athletes’ morale when leading in song and dance of some of the country’s war cries.
This also came as the Women’s cricket side, the Lady Chevrons had given Team Zimbabwe a flying start to their campaign for medals here, with a seven-wicket victory over Rwanda in a Group B tie.
Cyclists Skye Davidson and Stacey Hyslop will take to the road this morning in the Elite Women 134.1km race while the Chess duo of Jemusse Zhemba and Linda Shaba, ranked ninth at the Games, will also in action later today.
They were awaiting confirmation of their competition times and identities of their opponents as those were set to be done during electronic pairings last night.