Kenya Wheelchair Basketball Federation have accused Kenya National Paralympic Committee of sabotage after the government failed to approve their trip to Johannesburg, South Africa for the Tokyo Paralympics Africa qualifiers.
KWBF secretary-general, Simiyu Barasa, thinks their national umbrella body sabotaged them after their documents went missing on the day they were supposed to be discussed by the Sports Fund Board.
The official narrated that KNPC president Agnes Oluoch had been in constant communication with him, assuring that the documents he submitted were on course only for things to turn out negative.
Given that KWBF is yet to fully comply with the Sports Act 2013 in terms of registration, they have been using KNPC's certificate and letterhead.
This time around, Barasa said KNPC has been taking them in circles and released to them the certificate at the 11th hour.
“Agnes called me often and always indicated that she was pushing our papers to the relevant offices at the ministry and that she is optimistic. Ironically, on the day, the Sports Fund had our request on the agendas, our documents disappeared,” noted Barasa.
“Coincidentally, Agnes gave us the KNPC’s certificate the morning Sports Fund Board was meeting and when we got to KenCom House to attach the permit, we found out our documents were missing. After a whole day of searching for the documents at KenCom, we found them after 4 pm which was too late for the board to deliberate on our plight,” added Barasa.
Following the aborted outing, the federation will be lodging an appeal to Gerald Gitonga- the Sports Commissioner's office to at least compensate the players who have been training for the past eight months in preparations for the qualification showpiece.
“Also, We’ll petition to the government to fund the teams to the world qualification tournament,” continued Barasa.
