NAMIBIA’s amateur boxers, who will compete at the Commonwealth Games next month, are broke and hungry.
The five boxers claim they have not received a single cent towards their preparations for the multi-sport event in India, even though Government has availed N$500 000 for that purpose a fortnight ago. The team argued that they desperately need money to buy training gear and to pay for their lodgings. ‘We have been preparing since the 9th of August but we have not received anything,’ said an angry Tobias Munihango, the team’s captain.The boxers allege that self appointed team manager, Ambrosius Kandjii, is the reason for their woes and only wants to cash in on them. However Kandjii claims he is only ‘concerned with the welfare of our boxers’ and that the Namibia National Olympic Committee’s (NNOC) Secretary General, Abner Xoagub, was deliberately blocking the funds for the boxers. ‘I’m not happy with the circumstances that our boxers are in,’ Kandjii said, adding that relationship, between the boxing federation and NNOC, has been strained for a while now. ‘They (NNOC) did not want boxing to be part of the Commonwealth Games from the start. They tried all sorts of things to keep us from participating,’ he said.Xoagub dismissed Kandjii’s claims, saying that the federation does not have it’s house in order.’Whenever there are international events like this one, we have a problems with these boxing guys,’ said Xoagub.’We requested a budget with regards to the boxers preparations. ‘We only received a budget from the boxing federation on Friday at 15h00 and they said they needed funds to be released so that they could travel to Swakopmund the same day.’I told them that’s not how things work at the Olympic Committee.’He added that boxers had approached his office with their dilemma but that he had told the them to go through their federation and only then can they be helped. ‘I told them that they should go through their federation because we do not directly deal with athletes,’ Xoagub said.’We are only paying for the period that these boxers were in camp after they had been selected and that is from the 3rd of September. ‘Those guys have been in camp before their selection, so who was paying for their expenses?’Xoagub added that he understood the boxers plight, but that Goverment had only availed less than a quarter of the amount they had initially requested for athletes preparations. He said his office gave a million of it’s own money towards the cause.’Two years ago we submitted a N$2,2 million budget to the Ministry of Sport for preparations of athletes for the Commonwealth games but we only received N$500 000. We have to go back and request for more or else we will not be able meet all the athletes’ demands.’He said his office would grant some of the boxers requests as soon as a thorough outline of their preparation plans was submitted.’They (Boxing Federation) put up a request for equipment and a training camp for Zambia, as well as catering. Kandjii, who had ‘briefly’ suspended the boxers meal last week, also said the boxers were entitled to additional funds on the basis of having qualified for the games. In response, Xoagub said the various sport federations had been promised N$25 000 for each athlete that qualified by the end of June. He said the money was to assist with preparations for the Delhi games and not for their personal use. Xoagub also said only Siegfried Kaperu and the Cuban, Eduardo Correa, would accompany the team as coaches.
