Israel Saria
Tanzania Olympic Committee (TOC) opened a five-day seminar for sports officials of its affiliated bodies in Dar es Salaam yesterday.
During his opening speech, TOC secretary general Filbert Bayi called for the urgent need to have managers and sports administrators with sufficient education and extensive knowledge of the sports disciplines they are in charge.
Bayi said sufficient education coupled with experience would be effective to spearhead good sports leadership and subsequent development.
He noted that for long spells sports bodies in the country have been under poor leadership, as those who aspire for the posts have either lacked enough education or they have poor background of the sport disciplines.
Poor performance at international events has been the outcome of the shoddy leaders who have dominated potential posts in sports bodies.
He said disputes have been prevalent as incompetent leaders have been spending more of their time in bickering instead of laying out plans for sports development.
TOC is in a strong bid to do away with poor leadership which stands as the reason behind staging of the seminar.
The seminar has been tailored to equip sports officials of various sports bodies with managerial and administrative skills.
Bayi, a former 1,500 metres record holder during his athletics glory in the seventies, said another big challenge is to have an equal or gender-balanced leadership opportunity as men have been predominant in sports bodies.
“There is a conspicuous shortfall of ladies in leadership posts throughout the country. It’s high time now women have to come out of shell and aspire for leadership posts in the same way the men does,“ said Bayi.
Leaders who took trouble to attend the seminar are from Athletics Tanzania (AT), Netball Association of Tanzania (CHANETA) and Tanzania Sports Writers (TASWA).
Temeke District Commisioner Said Mkumbo, who was the chief guest on the seminar’s opening day, called all participants to adhere to the knowledge to be gained from the seminar.
“Make use of this seminar wisely and for the betterment of your associations, we want to see associations affiliated to TOC performing well,” he said.
Present during the opening of the seminar was National Sports Council’s chairman Iddi Kipingu and TOC vice-chairman.
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