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The Portfolio Committee on Sport and Recreation wants emphasis on the sport funding from the National Lottery to be geared towards development of sport infrastructure in rural areas.

The Committee today received a briefing from the National Lottery Board on its budget allocation to sport, SASCOC and federations. The Committee appreciated that from the R483 million funding that the National Lottery gave to sport, 26% was allocated to the development of sport infrastructure.

However, the Committee has noted that the sport funding shows biasness towards urban areas. The Committee intends to ensure that sport funding is distributed equally to rural and struggling communities. The Committee also wants to be assured that there are tighter monitoring controls by the National Lottery Board of the entire budget that the lottery gives to sport.

The Committee feels that the amount allocated to sport and federations is good investment, but monitoring of the utilisation of these funds must be improved or enhanced.

Members of the Committee also welcome the new Act (Lotteries Amendment Act) that has been adopted which will ease the application process for funding, particularly when it comes to applications by rural communities/schools that do not have the resources or the capacity to complete the applications due to the requirements of the previous legislation.

The previous process had frustrated the delivery of sport and recreation infrastructure in rural communities by exposing them to the use of consultants, some of whom would commit fraudulent acts of diverting money to their own pockets instead of the projects to which they had applied the funds for.