By Odwori Brian,
KAMPALA
The government has been urged to put sports at the forefront while drafting the national budget.
The call to action has been made by Ismail Kiirya, the President of Uganda Young Democrats, a Democratic Party youth wing. Kiirya was addressing journalists at City House Kampala when he said that the sports sector offers a variety of employment opportunities for the majority poor because they have the qualifications and the talent imploring the government to prioritize talent identification and building in the country.
“Sports can employ many people. We therefore, urge the government to invest more funds in the sports sector as this will help to curb down unemployment among the youth,” he said
This comes at a time when Ugandan athletic Joshua Cheptegei won the 10000m race at 2023 world athletics championships in Budapest Hungary breaking the record to become a 4th man in history to win three gold medals in a row.
Cheptegei showed exceptional win when he raced for a time of 27:51:42 in Budapest. He won his first in doha (2019), and second in Oregon in (2022).
Despite the country having people like Cheptegei with such an amazing talent, Kiirya says the government has not done enough to boost talent noting that Cheotegei’s win is awarded to Uganda as a country not Cheptegei as an individual.
He suggests that government funding should cater for all sports activities like football, tennis, volleyball, ludo by constructing good training facilities, paying players.
In addition, the young democrats president decried the bias towards sports sector that is being looked at as a mere game and urged Ugandans to stop taking sports as a mere game but rather a job. He reminded Ugandans of their obligations to market country’s sports industry both at regional and international levels.
“Sports shouldn’t be treated as a game, it is a job where many people are earning a living from therefore the government should highly consider it,” he added
It should be noted that sports sector was allocated Shs48.9 billion in this financial year 2023/24 and much of this money is given to the Federation of Uganda Football Association (FUFA) leaving other sports sectors with peanuts.
Parrots Media has learned that part of these funds was expected to be sourced from the world bank that has unfortunately suspended extension of new public loans to Uganda over the controversial Anti-homosexuality law. This leaves many unanswered questions to the sports fraternity wether its budget will be serviced or not.
