Without revealing figures, National Council of Sports (NCS) general secretary Bernard Ogwel revealed they are considering more support towards clubs.
Ogwel was speaking during a press briefing in Lugogo, where he was sharing updates of the current status of compliance by sports federations and associations under the 2023 National Sports Acts.
‘We now know that in some sports disciplines, clubs are more serious than federations,’ Ogwel said.
‘Last year we had Shs300m to support clubs that had continental engagements and for most of them, we came in to help in a small way to complement their efforts especially by buying air tickets.
‘We should support clubs more and we will start that by piloting with football then move to other sports disciplines. No federation owns an athlete. It is the clubs doing the work and that is why I am shocked that some federations now want to start academies.
‘Federations can support clubs with academies instead of competing with them. In my view, federations can have centres of excellence where they can have capacity building for technical staff, support clubs, scout players.’ Daily Monitor understands that some basketball and hockey clubs were beneficiaries of this subsidy.
Ogwel was highlighting the waste and lack of accountability in federations, where some leaders take on duplicated or more roles to keep government support to themselves.
‘Conduct proper research on what these federations do with the money we give them,’ Ogwel urged the media.
‘They organize national team engagements where the president also goes as a coach. Maybe they do not see eye to eye with their general secretary so they are also the ones doing the accountability. Then after they say they do not have funds (to complete the compliance process).
‘If we did a proper audit of the money federations have received from the government in the last five years, you will realize that they are just not good planners.
‘In Public Service, an accountant earns about Shs700,000 to Shs1m. Why would a federation that gets over Shs100m fail to employ an accountant to do proper accountability. It would cost them about Shs12m a year.
‘The compliance process has been affected by a lot of these internal federation wrangles because you need a fully-fledged executive committee to submit applications. We also want sports organizations to streamline their activities (have administrators, technical directors too) but we can only guide them, not force them,’ Ogwel added.