Kenya’s Cabinet Secretary for Sports, Heritage and Culture Amina Mohamed has announced that each player in 12 of the 18 Kenyan Premier League (KPL) clubs will receive a token of Sh10,000 as part of a Sh20 million COVID-19 stimulus package from the Sports Fund for the next three months.
According to Mohammed, the Fund has a verified list of players from each club who will be entitled to receive the amount to help cushion the adverse effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We are going to release 10,000 per month for 30 players and 5 technical officers for 12 most vulnerable KPL Clubs. This will be a total of 420 beneficiaries. The stimulus package will be for the next two months with a possibility of extension of a third month should we be able to mobilize more funds from well-wishers and our partners,” she said.
“We have agreed that we are starting with KPL because we know the difficulty they are going through. After verification, we have come up with a final list of those footballers suffering the most. We will begin with them and continue rolling out the program for the next 15 days while taking stock,
“We will begin with KPL players because of the distress they are going through and then continue from there. We have a verified list. Previously we had a list with exaggerated numbers before we verified and got the real numbers,” she added.
The news will serve as a tremendous and timely source of relief for players in the Kenyan Premier League after the majority of the clubs failed to pay salaries to players and technical staff on their payroll.
The Cabinet Secretary also revealed that the Fund is working with other Federations to spread the program further to include more disciplines.
“We are also releasing the same amount of money to our most vulnerable National Team athletes in all our active Sports Federations for the same period of time. This is to enable them continue training for upcoming global events,” she said.
The Sports Fund has so far given Sh50 million to the sports stimulus, in addition to an earlier Sh30 million handed to the Ministry. Mohammed also stated that they will continue distributing food packages to more sportsmen in distress.
“I am appealing to all corporates to come out and support our sportsmen and women. They bring pride to our country and we will be happy if more companies and well-wishers come out to contribute to support our athletes so that they come out of this pandemic stronger doing what they do best,” she said. “We are trying to do this for two or three months and that is why we need support.”