The Ministry of Youth, Culture and Sport (Mijespoc) is not ready to dispatch funds for the preparations of the fourth coming Olympic Games scheduled for Beijing, China in August.The Secretary General in the Sport Ministry, Jean Pierre Karabaranga told Times Sport yesterday that they have not yet discussed the budget despite Rwanda National Olympic Committee (RNOC) handing in its final budget for this year’s Games.Karabaranga said, “We have the RNOC budget for the Olympic Games but we have not yet prepared means of dispatching the required funds to any of the four federations which are preparing to participate in the Games’ qualifiers.”“Not every federation will take part in the qualifiers in search for an Olympic spot because some federations didn’t prepare their respective athletes and as a consequence that would be wastage of funds,” Karabaranga stated.Karabaranga further added that means of acquiring government funds at the moment will be a hard task, hinting out that money will be got in late January or early February or even beyond that (time).With no funds available from the Sport Ministry at the meantime, the boxing team could be forced to call off the start of its preparations for the first African qualifiers slated for January 22-31 in Algeria and instead concentrate on the second phase in Windhoek, Namibia on March 32 until April 2.RNOC presented its Frw190 million-budget to the Sport Ministry last year to enable early preparations of this year’s Olympic Games but ever since, there has been no response.According to initial plans, Rwanda is expected to be represented in five sports disciplines including; Athletics, Boxing, Swimming, Cycling and Paralympics.However, among the five disciplines, only athletics is assured of having a representative in Beijing after Dieudonne Disi qualified for the Games with his time of 27:22:23 in 10.000m at the Memorial Van Damme race held in Belgium last year.Three more athletes are hoping to use continental and world championships from February to May to search for the minimum required time for the Games.Meanwhile, cycling and swimming are relying on wild cards from the international body to have any chance of participating in the Beijing Games.Ends
