UHA, NCS battle for control of Lugogo hockey pitch
Jan 28, 2015
Uganda Hockey Association (UHA) chairman Dunstan Nsubuga is bitter over National Council of Sports (NCS) ‘arrogance and misuse’ of the austral turf pitch at Lugogo.
By David Namunyala
Uganda Hockey Association (UHA) chairman Dunstan Nsubuga is bitter over National Council of Sports (NCS) ‘arrogance and misuse’ of the austral turf pitch at Lugogo.
Nsubuga was upset after NCS authorised the High School Kadanke youth concert organisers to stage the event on the pitch, last Saturday, without the association’s consent.
“We had a meeting with them (NCS) on Wednesday last week but we were not informed of this event but rather of the pressure they were facing from the sports ministry to generate revenue from the facility,” Nsubuga said at a press briefing at the Uganda Olympic Committee (UOC) offices.
He added, “We had also asked NCS to allow us fence off the pitch for security purposes but we have not received any feedback.”
According to an agreement signed by the two parties in 2004, UHA was mandated to manage the pitch worth over $200,000 for 15 years until 2018. But for the past couple of years, a number of events that are not sports related have taken place on the pitch which is likely to cause damage to the turf and yet without UHA’s mandate.
But according to the NCS general secretary Jasper Aligawesa, they are mandated to raise revenue from all the sports facilities. Aligawesa who was responding to UHA’s plea said that NCS is the overall controller of all the facilities at Lugogo and they are mandated to raise funds from them.
“It’s not true that we didn’t inform them about the Kadanke event because we wrote to them on January 16 but they didn’t respond so we went ahead,” he said.
“It’s funny that the people who are complaining a lot have no sporting activities, at least the cricket people would have grounds to complain about the concerts that usually take place at the oval but not UHA,” he said.
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