Government comes to Shujaa’s rescue as Namwamba offers to pay team allowances

Sports Cabinet Secretary Ababu Namwamba has announced that the government will come to the rescue of the suffering Kenya 7s players as they will pay the team’s allowances for the second and third outings of the 2023 HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series outings set to take place in Dubai and Cape Town over the next two weeks.

This past weekend, the men’s national rugby 7s team was the talk of town after the Shujaa players initiated a funds drive campaign seeking to cater for their expenses after revealing that they had not been paid for three months by the Kenya Rugby Union.

Kenya 7s players sound warning alarm as cash crisis deepens with KRU silent

The team, in their appeal, noted that they had been struggling to deal with the daily life challenges of catering for their bills which forced them to turn to the public as KRU remained silent on the matter.

Following a public outcry on the state of the team, which is considered as one of the country’s assets on the global stage, the Sports CS convened a meeting with the governing body where he announced the relief package afterwards.

“Our Shujaa team that went to Dubai on Sunday night travelled without allowances. We are going to make allowances available to them immediately while they are in Dubai so that they can be able to represent the country both in Dubai and Cape Town where we will also provide the resources,” Namwamba said.

Additionally, the CS extended the same offer to the women’s 7s team who were supposed to play in the Dubai Sevens International Invitational Women’s Category from 1-3 December but risked missing out due to failure to travel owing to lack of visas and required finance.

“I have also given assurance that the women’s team will also go to Dubai. The men’s team travelled but the women’s team remained because of confusion and the messy way the situation was handled. I have given a commitment that we will send the women’s team to Dubai and we will facilitate their travel and allowances,” he said.

The CS finished by issuing a strong warning to KRU for the manner in which they have handled the situation at hand

“I am authorizing this support because I feel the pain of players who have been treated unfairly. We will extend our support to them but we want to work with the union to ensure this situation does not happen again.

We will not continue to manage sports by crisis. Especially in a scenario where we have a calendar and we know what will happen in a year’s time and we wait till last minute to start running like headless chicken,” he concluded.