By Kimathi Kamau
NAIROBI, Aug. 28 (Xinhua) -- Kenyan men's sitting volleyball team is complaining the lack of official support ahead of the Africa Para-Sitting Volleyball Championships to be held in Rwanda from Sept. 10 to 14.
The continental event will also serve as qualifiers for the 2018 Sitting Volleyball World Cup to be held at The Hague, Netherlands next July.
The President of the Kenya Sitting Volleyball Federation, Polycarp Mboya, has called on the country's Ministry of Sports, Culture and the Arts to follow through on its verbal commitment to support the teams.
"We are supposed to be in residential training, but we are not because we don't have the funds. Sitting volleyball is played by athletes with a physical disability and encompasses all age groups and both genders.
"Therefore, movement itself from their homes to the training centre at Kasarani is a big challenge. In all honesty, if a team deserves to be in residential training, we know where the priority should go," Mboya lamented.
Kenya missed out on the opportunity to host the regional championships in May after the State failed to avail 280,000 U.S. dollars needed to host the event with Rwanda stepping in to stage the qualifiers.
"This should be the time of fine-tuning training, implementation of offensive systems and mentally preparing for the tournament but instead, we are dealing with players failing to make to camp because they lack fare. That is sad," Kenya head Coach; Joseph Juma, claimed.
Juma who has 18 players available will trim the squad to the 12 required for the Kigali trip where Kenya will compete to nail one of the two available slots for the Netherlands World Cup as the squad trains more in anticipation.
The team is scheduled to leave the country for Rwanda on Sept. 8. Egypt who are ranked third in the world are the only African nation that has already qualified for the global showpiece.
