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{
    "id": 1294922,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1294922/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 288,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Ababu Namwamba",
    "speaker_title": "The Cabinet Secretary for Youth Affairs and Sports",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "Among the first measures we took was to host a multi-agency forum to agree on how to confront this plan. We agreed on specific intervention measures. One of the measures was to put in place a multi-agency team to lead the anti-doping effort, which we have done. We have put together a team led by a former elite athlete, Mr. Wesley Korir. We also committed USD 5 million for the next five years to help propel that. We realized that the previous war against doping was disjointed. Efforts were not made to join dots. We now have a multi-agency team that brings together investigative bodies from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI), the National Intelligence Service (NIS), the Judiciary to deal with prosecution and the department of health. This is a team that can deal with the menace from prevention which is key – nabbing an athlete is not useful. What is useful is prevention. The significant investment has to be at the level of prevention and investigation. I would like to inform the Senate Majority Leader that I visited a camp in Iten and one of the things I noted was that, it is possible for an athlete to run into trouble for taking drugs across the counter. You could walk to a chemist and buy a drug which may contain some elements that will ring bells and get you into trouble with the anti-doping bodies. The Senate should have faith in the multi-agency team we have put in place. It might have taken time, but remember the magnitude of the crisis we inherited. It required a well thought out plan. When the President of World Athletics Lord Sebastian Coe visited Kenya in January this year, he sympathized with us. This is why the World Athletics agreed with the plan we put on the table. I assure the Senate Majority Leader and this House that we will move with greater haste and roll out the programme that we have put together under this plan led by the multi-agency team. We will be more available. In addition, I would like to inform this House that there are investigations at advanced stages. For obvious reasons, I will not delve into details. I believe that we are in a good course in our anti- doping war. The mantra in the Ministry is, “zero tolerance to doping”. If I were to pick the first challenge for this Ministry, it would be sports federations. This is across the whole sporting arena. We have had a big challenge in swimming. The last three months, we have spent so much time sorting out a swimming crisis going back seven years. We are on the verge of cracking that crisis in swimming. Football has had its challenges. The Senate Majority Leader is right to say that him and I go a long time back. We have shared a lot of thoughts around the question of; how do we fix our football? How do we align, propel and deploy the full potential of our footballing talents? Therefore, we have put together a framework of engagement with federations. I did call all federations to a forum and 69 turned up. We agreed on a number of irreducible minimums. Those minimums included transparency and accountability in the utilisation of resources placed at their disposal. It also includes governance because the biggest challenge in federations is governance. I can tell you that when you fix governance, it is amazing to see the results. You can see what is happening in our rugby. We were able to sort out the leadership issues in rugby. Our rugby is actually coming back. Our Shujaa Team has just"
}