Secretary-general of the Namibia Paralympic Committee (NPC), Michael Hamukwaya said Namibia being allocated three slots for the upcoming Paralympic Games should be blamed on lack of performances during the Paralympic pathway.

Hamukwaya, who is also a coach, told Nampa in an interview on Tuesday that during the 2016 Paralympic Games in Brazil, team Namibia took seven athletes and with three slots this year, it has now moved steps backward.

“Performance is important and we should always follow the International Olympic Committee (IPC) pathway. The IPC has 11 Grand Prix events and our athletes should at least participate in two or three of them every year,” he said.

The secretary-general added that athletes need to move a gear up if they are to earn the country more slots at Paralympic Games.

“This has nothing to do with funding, in 2019 we competed at the World Champs and only Johannes Nambala won something and if all our elite athletes came back home with medals we would not be talking of three slots at the moment,” he said.

Hamukwaya further acknowledged that while money is needed to compete at these major events, the Namibian Government as well as the current support from corporate Namibia should have been enough to expose these athletes and as such, athletes have no excuse to justify underperformance.

“You have NamPower making sure they meet government halfway and athletes should also start taking these opportunities given to them seriously, because if we don’t perform at these major competitions we won’t be awarded enough slots by IPC when the calendar year comes to an end,” he said.

A big lesson learned during this Paralympic pathway is to never let their guards down, the coach said.

“We have a lot of young athletes coming up stronger every year in the world and what we need now is to put up a stronger plan for the next three years, but what is important is to follow the IPC pathway which will require a lot of funding to compete at all these events,” said Hamukwaya stressing that athletes must always bring their part when given opportunities to represent their nation if they are to avoid a repeat of this just-ended IPC pathway.

Nambala, Ananias Shikongo and Lahja Ishitile are the three athletes that will represent the country at the rescheduled 2020 Paralympic Games in Tokyo, Japan in the T13 and T11 categories during the month of August and September.

On Wednesday Minister of Sport, Youth and National Service (MSYNS), Agnes Tjongarero said government is cutting down on all costs to ensure that the little funds they have are directed to athletes’ needs.

In recent years government has consistently decried its financial position with the MSYNS annual budget always getting cut during the budget allocation. At present, NamPower funds Disability Sports Namibia with N.dollars 1.2 million annually which was last year increased to N.dollars 2 million. The funds are shared among three bodies – Paralympics, the Namibia National Association of the Deaf and Special Olympics Namibia.

The reason for the increment was to bolster the paralympians’ qualifications and preparations for the upcoming games.

Source: Namibia Press Agency