…Sports PS Kangwa schools sports federations
By MICHAEL MIYOBA
GOVERNMENT has challenged Sports Federations to be creative and mobilise resources to help meet obligations for this year which promises to be a busy one.
Kangwa said resources will be scarce this year due to a lot of travelling which is expected because of a number of sporting events such as the AFCON, the All Africa Games and the Paris Olympic Games in France.
Kangwa said Government will not manage to fund everything alone due to the limited resources.
“Government business closed last week Friday so ministries haven’t been funded so nonetheless our boys needed to be accommodated what happened?
FAZ had to come up with an initiative where they go and find a place for accommodation and then Government pays later because there is no money. The treasury has not released the money yet,” Kangwa said.
“There must be initiative on the association to say since there is no money, PS can you commit that we get accommodation and when the money comes you can refund us then we can pay that’s what we do and it is the same thing with air tickets.
Government may not have the resources now but the association has a good relationship with a good airline and they make a deal then we pay later so those are initiatives that associations must take because we can’t do everything for them,” he added.
Kangwa said Government had on several occasions gone overboard in certain instances and acquired debt in form of air tickets just to ensure that federations meet their international fixtures.
Kangwa said Government was determined to ensure that it does its part to support federations to meet obligations for this year.
He said the Ministry of Sports will however need to wait funding just like all the ministries as they receive funding at the same time.
“Government system works in a certain way. If the treasury has not released money today no matter what you do you can go anywhere, that’s how the system works but the money will be released.
As we want to support federations, we want them to meet their obligations and it is just that this is when now the government is kicking in, ministries are going to start getting funded. Today is the second of January so there is no exception in government to say that there is a parallel system that releases finances for sports.
We have to wait like any other ministry, like education, agriculture, the time they get funded is the time we also get funded,” Kangwa said.
Kangwa however reaffirmed Government’s commitment to create an enabling environment to motivate the private sector to invest in sports development.
He said the government will work closely with sports federations and the private sector for the continuous growth of sports.
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