By Tione Andsen

Lilongwe, July 14, Mana: Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Sports, Isaac has hinted that the Ministry was intending to revive Presidential Initiative on Sports.

He disclosed his Saturday during the launch of K 40 million Gateway Central Region Netball League at Gateway Netball Court in Area 47, Lilongwe.

Katopola pointed out that the initiative was suspended some four years ago and many stakeholders have been with the Ministry to re-consider reviving for the development of sports in the country.

“We have not barred the ideas of the Presidential initiative on Sports and we are still working to see how we can bring back the tournament. The initiative was beneficial and was reaching out to many particularly in the rural areas,” he recalled.

Katopola said there was need to concentrate in grass root development of every sports code if the country was to be successful in national, regional and international competitions.

 The Principal Secretary said that for this to be achieved there was need to invest more in the development of the sports code hence the call for more financial support and investments.

He thanked Mpico for showing interest to face-lift the Gateway netball court saying a proper playing surface would inspire more netball players.

“We need to have reliable courts so that our netball teams should be kept busy always. We are just hoping that the face-lifting will start soon,” Katopola added.

National Association of Malawi (NAM) Treasurer, Cecilia Mtukule Bondwe said the Presidential initiative on sports has been on break for four years and if the Ministry was considering reviving it would be a welcomed idea.

She said the initiative was providing netball space to all netball players and grass root netball was taking shape with such tournament in place.

“This would help to accelerate the rebuilding process of the national netball team; the Queens whose performance leaves much to be desired. Our standards have drastically done down in the past year taking into account that we dropped from position six to seven on world ranking and from second position from third of Africa region due to dismal performance,” Bondwe viewed.