Sports federations and stakeholders have been given seven days to review and give their input on the resumption of sports protocols draft released yesterday by the government.
Sports Cabinet Secretary, Amina Mohamed, released the guidelines during a virtual meeting that brought stakeholders and ministry officials together.
Amina said from the recommendations given, the ministry will issue protocols to be followed. She said the protocols have been put in place to ensure sports activities resume in a good environment.
"Due to the nature of pandemic, it was imperative to take a delicate and diligent process to satisfy the Ministry of Health and World Health Organisation directives on the same including on public participation. I hope we will be able to complete exercise as soon as possible and roll out a sports calendar,” CS Amina said during the meeting.
The proposed protocols, that have seen sports categorised from high risk to low risk, will see some of the most stringent measures put in place owing to Covid-19 pandemic.
The protocol report was put together by the advisory committee on resumption of sports activities chaired by the ministry’s Chief Administrative Secretary, Hassan Noor Hassan.
“I want to thank the members of the committee for putting in the hard work to ensure we have these guidelines ready. We have lost a lot of time this year and as you can see, the school year has been lost and we don’t want to see the same for sports. We want to pick sports together and keep sports alive in the country,” added Hassan. The resumption of sport will take place in each of the six categories that have been put in three phases.
The first phase has been dedicated to medical and athletes’ tests; followed by the second phase, where the players will be required to resume training individually for seven days before training in small groups for a week. Then the third phase would involve collective training.
Some of the non-contact sports set for reopening are athletics, volleyball, cricket, bowling, weightlifting, cycling, table tennis, lawn tennis, shooting and golf. Sports considered high risk are rugby, boxing, judo, karate and wrestling.
Kenya is set to host World Athletics Continental Gold Tour on October 3 as well as the Kenya Open Golf tournament in November with Harambee Stars set to host Comoros in a Africa Cup of Nations qualifier in the same month.
