NASA postponed

LIMBA MUPETAMI

WINDHOEK



The 17th edition of the Namibia Annual Sport Awards (NASA) has been postponed to October next year.

This announcement was made by Freddy Mwiya, chairperson of the Namibia Sports Commission yesterday in Windhoek.

Mwiya explained that the event was initially scheduled for the end of October this year; however, the decision to postpone was made given the current state the nation is in due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“We all know that the national, regional, continental and global sporting events scheduled for 2020 have been significantly disrupted and our athletes and officials are under tremendous pressure, stress and anxiety and their mental health should be amongst the highest priority which calls into question the authenticity of hosting a realistic NASA,” said Mwiya.

“The NASA organising committee, after consultations with other key shareholders, deem it as not feasible for the event to ahead this year as originally planned. We believe that we cannot expect a fair and quality submission of nominations to the NASA given the limited number of competitive events our athletes were able to participate and compete in during the last quarter of 2019,” Mwiya still added.

“Equally, there has not been much international participation in the first quarter of 2020 both locally, regionally, continentally and globally.

“We are hopeful that with the lifting of the state of emergency and easing of restrictions and the gradual opening of contact sport under stage four of Covid-19 the likelihood that our athletes will be able to participate in regional and other competitions,” he concluded.