I want to request our UOC Leaders to arrange a meeting between the IOC President, Dr. Thomas Bach, and our Federations / Associations before he goes back out of Uganda.
It is very wrong for the IOC President not to hear from our Federations before he goes back. I thought this was going to be yesterday at Munyonyo, but unfortunately, yesterday was all about eating, dancing, photos, speeches, many other guests, Etc.
My Justification
1. There are things the IOC President can take back to the IOC Executive Board to help our Federations better. We cannot afford to miss this chance for the IOC President to hear those things directly from our Federations themselves.
2. Dr. Bach made it very clear yesterday at Munyonyo that he wants to hear how the IOC can help us better. He said clearly that they were here for us and to hear from us.
3. The IOC is made of several NOCs around the world e.g. the UOC. And those NOCs are made up of our member Federations.
We are therefore the primary building blocks of both the UOC and the IOC. So how can the IOC President come to Uganda and not meet us? If this was an oversight on his program, please try to rectify it quickly.
4. There is a lot of information that some of us have from both research and interaction with Dr. Bach’s team since yesterday when they arrived in Uganda. We need to discuss openly with him to get a very clear picture of what is doable and not doable, permissible and not permissible.
5. Dr. Bach appears to be Ring Fenced right now. No one can even get 5 minutes with him in a properly structured interactive meeting to table challenges for proper audience and resolution.
The best way for him to hear from our Federations is to have a properly scheduled interactive meeting with us.
6. A recent observation unearthed that only about 5% of the Annual UOC budget goes to its Member Federations. With many UOC Federations facing possible Deregistration by government, we need to sit and amicably find an answer on how to increase the percentage of UOC funds spent on its Member Federations.
We really cannot afford to keep spending most of our UOC funding on Seminars and Workshops where we blow away 15 – 30 million Ugx per Seminar of just 2 – 3 days when entire UOC Federations receive only 4.5 million Ugx the whole year from UOC.
Which money can ideally not do anything for our Federations.
And now I know that we can actually change this. A meeting with Dr. Bach is very important on this and the above issues as well as any other issue that any other Federation may feel is important to them. I beg to Submit.
The writer is the President of Uganda Table Tennis Association
