After the Head of state, Mr Yoweri Kaguta Museveni made his national address on Sunday 20th September 2020, Ground Sports managed to get a hold of Uganda Volleyball Federation (UVF) president Hadija Namanda for an exclusive interview to get more clarity and also to learn what her thoughts were about the uplift on sports acitivies in the country and here is what transpired.
Meeting the SOPs requirements:
“Much as the president has given a green light which we have all been anticipating even with the last talk because we’d already sent in everything that they had requested for all the SOPs. We had bought literally everything we need especially for our league games and the like. So, the dispensers, the temperature guns and everything is with us, so we were hoping that he would open.”
Optimism:
“Even with the last address but by this one me I expected he would announce something.”
Straight into action:
“So, we can’t go straight into business until we meet National Council of Sports as federations but I’m hopeful that Monday Tuesday Wednesday we’ll be able to have that out of the way and then we can communicate to the rest of the fraternity on what is going to be happening.”
“Of course, we cannot start competitively now but we can always finalize with what we were handling that is trying to see that we handle the switch into the FIVB system and then look at all the different integrities because we already had a committee in place to look into the different details. We await their report and then share it with the fraternity and forge a way forward together.”
The constant tests:
“Of course, we’ll raise noise because of the costing because it is expensive.”
“of course, with the issue of constant checks and everything , it’s a protection in it’s way but maybe government will have to come in to provide this for the teams or the federation to a certain level because we cannot afford it.”
Teams participating:
“Every team needs to get back to normal that means they’ll have to start slowly by training, getting back their physical fitness as a team and bonding with their training patterns and all that kind of thing and then slowly getting into the competitive mood by working their technical and tactical aspects as well as us as a federation giving them an opportunity to do tryouts.”
Tournaments:
“We’ll have also to sit with the tournament organizers to see who can host during this time but of course, we are not going to starting competition right away we do not want injuries we do not want performance below par.”
The FANS:
“We are going to open up to online games capture that is streamlining and I think pay TV for some of these games to be able to show our audiences.”
National Council of Sports:
“I believe NCS has taken note of this and I believe in the next few days we can’t go past Friday next week with sitting online to decide on a few things with NCS and then give us the green light.”
