Trouble in Malkia Strikers camp in Japan

Stanley Mativo 

Two weeks ago, Sports Principal Secretary Kirimi Kaberia announced that complaints about delayed or unpaid allowances by all national teams representing the country in the international events will be a thing of the past as the government had put changes that would assure prompt payments.

PS Kaberia made the announcement when he received Team Kenya for African Games from Morocco where he revealed that all athletes will be getting their allowances 14 days before any competitions and although the World Championship set for Qatar later this month was to pilot the new changes, national women’s volleyball team feel overlooked in terms of government support.

Malkia Strikers players who are currently competing in Japan for FIVB World Cup made their displeasure known by ‘summoning’ Team Manager Ismael Chege in a Hamamtsu hotel on Sunday morning to demand their unpaid allowances for the African Games, Intercontinental and World Cup championships.

The nine-time Africa champions successfully defended their African Games title in Morocco and had in early August participated in Intercontinental Olympic qualifiers held in Catania, Italy and government still owes them monies for the two competitions .

“The girls feel they are being disgracefully overlooked in terms of government support despite relentlessly continuing to fly the Kenyan flag high at international competitions. They called me for a meeting and told me they needed their allowances but nothing I could do because we left the country without any funding from the government.

I have already informed our chairman Kioni (Waithaka) and said the ministry is aware of the team’s cry and they will look into the matter as soon as possible, ” Chege told Citizen Digital from Japan.

Malkia’s disquiet comes just two days, after the national Para-volley teams were forced to dig into their coffers to travel to Rwanda for the ongoing Africa Paralympics Sitting Championship after failing to secure any funding from the government.

Meanwhile,the Paul Bitok coached team lost their World Cup second match in as many matches after falling to Netherlands by straight sets (25-12, 25-19, 25-17) on Sunday morning.

In the opening fixture of the tourney being played in a round robin format, Malkia who are making their sixth appearance at the global scene lost to USA with the same margin but Bitok believes their is a big improvement in the squad despite the two loss.

“We are facing top ranked teams in the world and although we are yet to pick any win I can say when you look at the sets ratio we are trying much and I am we are going to hit our target of winning three matches this year. We want to improve our last edition outing where we won two matches, ” Bitok said.

Kenya next plays last year’s World Championship winners Serbia on Monday 5am Kenyan time in their third fixture.