BY PATIENCE LEPHOGOLE
Following the submission of the year 2017 and 2018 audited financial reports to the Registrar of Societies, the Botswana Netball Association (BONA) may be in trouble if it fails to submit previous audited reports for the past 6 years.
The Sunday Standard sources say the BNSC has been sent a circular which it passed to its affiliate to submit their compliance certificates and audited reports back dated to 2015, as such BONA is said to be struggling to submit those.
A letter written by the BONA president Malebogo Raditladi to her association’s affiliates reads in part: “BONA is struggling to produce the past records and still working on consultation with the past committees to assist on that. Also note that the 2018 submission was done, but according to the procedures of the Societies Act, no matter the submissions we cannot be seen to be compliant as the past 6 years are not found, they then asked us to bring proof of those submissions from the office and hence we are where we are trying to acquire those.”
The struggle to find past audit reports has forced BONA to ask its affiliates to comply as well by asking them to submit their registrar of society’s certificates of registration.
This has put pressure on BONA that, the letter further reads “We therefore decided to do an admin audit to also check our own affiliates following the mother body’s compliance request, that if we are to comply, our affiliates also need to comply. We are in this regard asking for all affiliates to please submit their registrar of society’s compliance submission to BONA office by the 9th August 2019 so that we are also able to be compliant to the BNSC and BNOC.”
Affiliates are to submit registration certificate, stamped team constitution, team financials as well as letter of compliance from the registrar of societies.
Speaking to The Sunday standard sports, BONA president expressed disappointment at individuals who shared internal communications, being surprised to hear from media personnel on the issue.
However, when asked about the previous report’s whereabouts, Raditladi said that she is not sure if BNSC have not been insisting on the submission of audited reports or just allowing submissions of financial reports, adding that they are the ones in a better position to answer that.
She said “Audit report costs much hence maybe other code like netball struggles to do audited reports and just submit financial reports.”
“The only thing we struggled with is the financial reports for the 2017 Netball World Youth Cup (NWYC) because there were no funds to do that and the BONA 2017 financial report where a lot of the 2017 games transactions were incorporated into the BONA financials. However that needed time to be cleared and delayed the 2018 report, because for us to have the 2018 we need to have brought forward that of 2017 hence the delay but it will be done,” Raditladi added.
Raditladi further added that other things noted are that if an office admin is not an expert in sports administration and development, they can overlook and miss other things. She said “This is the reason why we are having admin audit to use our expertise to put things in place for easy implementation of all needed to be done.”
When asked if BONA has been renewing their membership certificates, Raditladi was quick to agree. She said “I believe BONA has been doing so because we had credible and knowledgeable people in those committees, it might be just a matter of record keeping that happened, but I believe that somehow it will be corrected and ensure it never happens again.”
Despite all these happenings, Raditladi is optimistic that her association’s affiliates will submit as per request. She said “Affiliates are run by management who will be aware of the seriousness of the letter and follow society procedures and they will meet the deadline sub missions so that we start with other activities.”
“All is going so well at BONA; currently we are busy with admin audit. However this has halted other activities like league but when all auditing is done we will run as planned. We have encouraged affiliates to keep doing activities to keep athletes and officials active,” Raditladi opined.
