It has emerged that youth are using their prize money from Constituency tournaments to buy alcohol.
This emerged at a meeting of the Public Accounts Committee.
Government is, however, not able to dictate to the winners how to spend their prize money.
Ministry of Youth, Sports and Culture, Permanent Secretary, Ruth Maphorisa, informed the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) that they were aware that the youth were using the money to buy alcohol.
Maphorisa informed the PAC that the outcry has since been channelled to the constituency league committee, which is chaired by President Ian Khama.
Maphorisa noted that government position on the matter was that they were not in a position to dictate to the youth how they should spend the prize money.
“We are aware about the abuse of prize money,” she said, adding that the constituency league committee had been briefed about the matter.
Maporisa was responding to Gaborone South MP, Kagiso Molathegi, who wanted her to explain to the committee how they were going to address concerns that the tournaments were encouraging alcohol abuse among the youth.
┬á“Since the idea was to take away the youth from the streets and away from abuse of alcohol, what measures are you putting in place to address the problem?” asked Molathegi.
 The Permanent Secretary said government intended to come up with guidelines that will help the youth to use the money to run viable projects.
She also noted that they are also planning to use the constituency league to infuse programmes such as HIV/AIDS awareness and Safe Male Circumcision.
The constituency tournaments were started by President Ian Khama as one of his pet projects aimed at fighting alcohol abuse, a subject that ranks highest among his passions.
