Mr President, where are sports funds?

Editorial
By The Standard | May 11, 2019
President Uhuru Kenyatta.

During this year’s Beyond Zero campaign marathon, President Uhuru Kenyatta promised that no national team will lack funding when taking part in international tournaments. However, hardly two months since making the promise, the reality on the ground is totally different. Just two weeks ago, the softball national team was denied funding to travel to South Africa for an Olympic qualifier.

The Ministry of Sports said they do not have money to send the team to Durban. Before that, the national handball women team was denied an opportunity to travel to Uganda for an All Africa games qualifier also due to lack of funds.

Earlier, the men handball team was disqualified from taking part in the African games qualifier after failing to pay participation fees on time. This was despite the ministry spending millions of shillings to send the team to the tournament’s venue. This turn of events does not augur well for our sports industry, and we call for immediate action from Sports Ministry to stop further embarrassment for our sportsmen and women.

The sports fraternity has for a long time been promised a lot of things, but very little has been delivered. Next year being an Olympic year, many teams will be taking part in several international qualifiers and they will need to be facilitated to travel and train. It will not make sense to send unprepared teams to major events. Perhaps, the President should follow up his words with action.

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