Boxing federation seeks Shs850m for Olympics

With only a month to the African Games Olympics qualifiers, starting in February next year in Dakar, Senegal, Uganda Boxing Federation (UBF) president Moses Muhangi is worried his team might not perform well due to delayed preparation arising from lack of funds.

This he said yesterday when hosted at NTV Omumuli gw’emizannyo programme.

According to Muhangi, UBF needs over Shs850m to prepare for the qualifying tournament.
The federation has a huge task of selecting the required 13 boxers from a mass of 185 boxers who registered for the event under a call from the Uganda Olympic Committee (UOC) boss William Blick.

“We have a huge task of selecting the 13 boxers out of the 187 boxers who registered… We engaged with National Council of Sports (NCS) and UOC and they told us they do not have money to run this programme, yet they are the ones who disbanded our organised boxing team,” he added.

Muhangi has learnt that other countries have received preparation funds from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to help different federations prepare for Olympics but UBF is yet to receive their share.

"Other countries got support from IOC, but boxing as a federation has not received anything,” he said.

According to Muhangi, UBF has only received Shs150m, as part of this year’s federation budget from NCS and with this, they will start preparation for Olympic qualifiers next week.