South Sudan's English Daily Newspaper
"We Dare where others fear"
By Awan Achiek
The Minister of Youth and Sports, Dr. Joseph Geng Akech, on Tuesday presented the 2024/2030 Sports Development Policy before the Transitional National Legislative Assembly for approval.
The policy approved by the Council of Ministers on 30th August 2024, aims to promote sports and foster national unity among the youth.
It also includes the construction and renovation of stadiums across the ten states and three administrative areas by 2030.
“The general objective of the Sports Development Policy is to empower youth through sports, thereby fostering a sense of national pride, unity and community development in our country,” Geng said during ordinary sitting in Juba.
He said the policy will transform the sports landscape by strengthening legislative and sports governance, increasing commercial value as well as promoting professional sports.
“The policy aims to improve sports governance and capacity. Under this trend, the three items will be achieved. First, enactment of sports law and I am glad to announce to this August House that the ministry has already developed the people bodies bill 2024,” he said.
Geng added that the policy proposes capacity building of sport federations and associations.
“We have a total of 26 sports federations which are registered with the ministry of sports. The second program is professional sport standardization,” he said.
Geng added that the policy calls for setting up sports television and radio for sports advertisement, adding plans are ongoing to organize the sports financial conference from 26th to 28th November 2024 to attract investment in sports.
“We also aim to gazette and launch four competitive national leagues in a strategic sport discipline of football, basketball, and athletics,” he said.
For his part, Oliver Mori Benjamin, Chairperson for the Parliamentary Information Committee said the bill has been submitted to the Parliamentary Committee on Youth and Sports for scrutiny.
“This national youth policy underlines a lot of activities from the states, from the counties, to the national level. As per the conduct of the business of the National Legislative Assembly, this policy plan was referred to the relevant committee of youth and sports in the National Legislative Assembly to present its report on the second reading stage within two weeks,” Oliver said.
