CS Echesa says Sports Fund will ease federation woes

Sports Cabinet Secretary Rashid Echesa has urged the Sports Committee of the National Assembly to expedite the Sports Fund as his docket has been struggling to sponsor national teams due to its limited budgetary allocation.

Echesa was speaking as he appeared before the committee chaired by Machakos Town MP Victor Munyaka which summoned the CS on Thursday concerning the National Amputee Football Team which participated at the Amputee Football World Cup in Mexico.

The team hit the headlines after it emerged that they had not been paid their allowances despite representing the country for two weeks in the North America nation where they had a nice outing finishing 12 out of 24 nations in the tournament.

“The issue of allowances as you know, we do not have a budget which has made my ministry struggle even in terms of sponsoring national teams for international assignments. Therefore, we   appeal to this committee to push for the sports fund which will enable us to easily fund such activities,” Echesa told the Committee.

The team had to travel to the competition without national team kitting, drawing sharp public criticism and when put on the spot by Committee chair Munyaka, Echesa accepted the mistake “will not happen again”.

The CS was flanked by ministry’s Principal Secretary Ambassador Kirimi Kaberia who assured that the ministry had collaborated with Kenya Airways to provide transport for the national teams although he pointed out that the ministry does not have total control over the federations which sometimes do not follow due procedure.

“I want to say that we now have an agreement with Kenya Airways they are the official carriers of the national teams. However, sometimes teams make arrangements out of the ministry’s structure thus we are sometimes handicapped.

We understand we must be responsible for team Kenya but it has to go through the right procedure and that’s why we are calling for a standard regulation to govern all the federations,” advocated Kaberia.

Kaberia added that they will no longer start new projects but in turn they are seeking to complete the ongoing work such as the construction of the Nyayo National Stadium.

“We are also looking up to the incoming Sports Fund to see which priorities can be taken over. Most important is to finalise the work that is pending rather than start new projects,” he said.