The Namibia Paralympic Committee (NPC) re-elected its president Johannes Litwayi and Secretary-General, Michael Hamukwaya, at its Annual General Meeting held here on Wednesday.
Litwayi and Hamukwaya, who have served in these positions for the past four years, will be joined by Agnes Hausiku (vice president), JP Schmidt (treasurer) and additional members Suzette Guims and Henock Hanga.
In an interview with Nampa on Thursday, Hamukwaya said the AGM was preceded by a workshop, where delegates were educated on the constitution and budget reports were presented.
“The AGM ran smoothly and having the workshop helped us understand things,” he said.
Hamukwaya added that the next four years will be hard as they have the responsibility of growing the organisation.
“The most important thing is to continue to grow governance as well as strengthen our federations. It does not help to have a national team, but we don’t have a feeding programme,” he said.
The secretary-general stated that their goal going forward is to have more activities in the regions.
“We cannot focus on athletics alone. By 2024 at the Paris Paralympic Games we should have at least four sport codes which are athletics, swimming, boccia and powerlifting,” he said.
Hamukwaya also noted that wheelchair basketball and wheelchair tennis, as well as blind football, are codes that need to be developed.
“These federations are exciting but we don’t have activities happening. We have to start somewhere even though it’s going to be very difficult. We have to find ways of bringing in more sponsors to help with funding codes,” he said.
He also stated that securing a bus for the NPC is a dream they want to realise.
“Travelling with athletes with a disability or buying their equipment is costly, it’s double what an able-bodied athlete will pay, but as a federation we want to have a bus that is wheelchair-friendly as well as buy equipment that our athletes can use because without all this, it will be difficult to achieve our goals,” said Hamukwaya.
The independent panellists that oversaw the elections are Hamlet Luboni and Jeremia Shalukeni (law reform directorate), Salome Iyambo (Namibia Sports Commission) and John Kangowa (leadership, governance and HR consultant).
Source: The Namibian Press Agency