After more than seven months of delays, the Botswana Table Tennis Association (BTTA) will finally head for its elective Annual General Meeting (AGM).
The long overdue elective AGM is expected to take place on May 8 after some incessant pressure from affiliates who have, for a while now, been pushing for the election of new office bearers.
Ever since the term of office of the current BTTA executive committee elapsed in August last year, and the AGM was postponed, the association’s affiliates have been calling for the resignation of the entire committee.
The call was, however, not heeded at the time as the BTTA was not in possession of its audited financial reports and its “new constitution not yet approved by the Registrar of Societies”.
While the BTTA has always maintained that the approval of the new constitution was the main stumbling block, insiders have, however, said the main problem was the “audited financial report”.
According to sources close to the BTTA executive committee, the audited financial report, which should have been available way back in September last year when the AGM was supposed to have taken place, was only made available this past month.
With the association now reportedly in possession of the audited report, the BTTA has now decided to go ahead with the AGM despite it not being in possession of its new constitution.
Reached for comment, BTTA secretary general Bolokang Pema confirmed that the AGM will finally take place despite the association “not being in possession of its new constitution”.
“If you may recall, our term ended in August last year but at the time, we were in the process of renewing our constitution and aligning it with that of the Botswana National Sports Commission (BNSC). Our affiliates then resolved that we continue in office until the new constitution was approved hence the long delay in holding elections,” he explained.
According to Pema, the process of renewing the constitution has, however, been a tedious and long one, and is not yet finished. He said given the uncertainty of when the constitution would be released by the Registrar, Pema said the BTTA executive had resolved to go ahead and hold its AGM irrespective of whether the new constitution was available or not.
“We felt that the new constitution was taking too long to be signed and ratified by the Registrar hence the decision to hold our AGM using the current (old) constitution,” Pema said.
“Our reasoning is that there is a lot of things that should be happening right now which the current committee cannot sanction as we are awaiting election of a new committee.
“If we take long to hold elections, nothing will go on as we do not want to make strategies and policies for whoever will take office. We then decided that for the good of the association, we hold the elections to vote in a new committee to allow it to make plans for the BTTA events this year,” the secretary general continued.
Pema, however, refused to shed any light on issues relating to the BTTA’s audited report, rather referring all questions to the BTTA treasurer.
“I can answer all questions regarding the AGM but I cannot answer anything regarding the financial report. As a committee, we have not yet met to discuss it and I do not know anything about it. You however can call the treasurer,” Pema said.
