Table tennis board backs govt plan for national sport house

The South African Table Tennis Board welcomed the government’s plan to establish a national sport house, a facility intended to accommodate sporting federations currently struggling with office space. 

This came as the sports sector continued to face severe financial strain.

Federations were hit by budget cuts totalling about R40 million last year, with some, such as athletics and swimming, losing up to 60% of their funding, while South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (SASCOC) and several others received nothing at all. 

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Briefing Parliament’s Portfolio Committee, the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture revealed that 53% of federations were renting office space, while 39% did not have offices at all.

The proposed sport house was intended to ease this accommodation crisis. 

But despite supporting the initiative, Table Tennis Board representative Thabang Tsheiso said the financial challenges facing federations remained urgent and unresolved. 

"I hope in the new cycle this is not going to happen because it has had a very devastating impact on the operations of the federations… we’re still suffering the rigours of what has happened, and hopefully we should be looking at increasing these allocations," he said.