The Malawi National Council of Sports (MNCS) on Thursday launched the first-ever National Sports Awards in Blantyre.

Government, through MNCS introduced the annual sports awards in order to recognize outstanding athletes, individuals and organisations.

The inaugural Malawi Sports Awards will be held at Bingu International Conference Centre (BICC) in Lilongwe on March 9, 2018.

MNCS Executive Secretary George Jana expressed hope that the national awards will help to motivate the athletes to aim higher in their respective disciplines.

“We have been planning for this but we did not expect that this will come to pass and we are very happy.

“Obviously we intend to look at various alternatives to ensure that we should sustain this initiative for the benefit of our athletes,” Jana said at the event.

He said the nominees have been selected by various sports journalists in the country.

Jana explained that time was against the event and they needed to speed up the process.

Categories considered are junior female and male sports persons (Under-17), sports woman, sports man, sports woman with disability, sports man with disability, sports district of the year, umpire/referee/judge, coach and sportsperson of the year.