UCA offers to meet striking players

By Charles Mutebi

UCA chairman Richard Mwami has moved to quell the storm blowing over Uganda Cricket with an open letter defending the conduct of the board and calling for continued dialogue with the national team players, who are currently on strike over wage disputes. 

Addressed to “the cricket fraternity that we serve”, Mwami outlined the events that have led up to the damaging players’ strike in chronological order, meticulously absolving UCA of blame. 

Davis Karashani and his men, who are supposed to be in training for two upcoming ICC World Cup Qualifiers, laid down their tools this week protesting against the protraction of negotiations with the UCA for their new contracts. 

The old contracts expired in May following the ICC World Cricket League Division 2 in Bermuda, where Uganda finished second and secured a reward of $175,000 from the ICC “as contribution towards preparation of the National Team for the tournament in New Zealand in Jan 2014”, as Mwami put it. 

However, the negotiations dragged on for one and half months before a conclusion was reached on the structure of new player contracts. The players had been in national team training for that period but were not receiving pay because they were not contracted. The board proposed a compensation mechanism for that period, which the players rejected. 

Mwami revealed when the contracts expired in May, “We discussed the new contracts and made an improved offer of 100%. The new contracts to the players are 40% 0f the $175,000 advanced by ICC”. 

The old contracts offered the players sh200, 000 as basic wages and sh800, 000 as performance bonus. The new contracts offered sh400, 000 as basic wages and sh1.6m as performance bonus. 

The new contracts were ready for June but the players rejected them even though Mwami described them as “a very good package unprecedented in the history of Cricket in Uganda and not comparable to any sports team in Uganda”. 

The board initially chose to stand their ground over the offer but later relented and decided to change the payment structure to one that offered the senior players in the team more basic wages. 

As for the compensation due the players for the last one and a half month spent in training, Mwami wrote: “The Board made a decision to make a financial contribution of 20k per day per person to those who had been training for the month of July… The response from the team after that communication was negative. 

“The team demanded payment for June & July based on the contract sums. But we have no contract in place yet and this is because of the impasse that was created by the team members right at the beginning. We find this strange and a lack of respect to good governance.” 

The UCA guru concluded thus: “As the Board managing public funds we stand by our decision and continue to hope that sanity shall prevail. 

We shall continue to engage the Players in dialogue to put their Country beyond self and stay away from conducting our business in the papers”.