Just appointed Minister of State for Sports, Honourable Peter Ogwang has made an appearance today -18th August- at the Ministry of education and sports headquarters in Kampala to officially take over the job.
Formerly Minister of State for Economic Monitoring, the 37 year old replaces Hamson Obua who now serves as the Government Chief Whip after four years in the Sports Ministry.
Though the appointment came in July, the handover didn’t take place instantly as it normally does because Obua was part of the delegation that traveled with the Commonwealth team to Birmingham by the time of selection.
“I thank the president for giving me another opportunity to work in this cabinet and to serve my country. I am privileged that he has brought me to work under the Mama the first lady and Minister of Education and Sports. I am happy that I have joined a sector where I have passion.” The Minister told our reporter.
Ogwang believes he will be resourceful in the Ministry because of the passion he has for sports and his commitment to both accountability and proper utilisation of public funds.
“In a special way, I thank my brother honorable Hamson Obua and Mama for the tremendous achievements they have done for the sector ever since they took over. What waits for me is to build on what the ministry has been doing and see how we can move forward.” He added
The repositioned Minister finds Sports with a 47-Billion Shillings budget, an amount that has never been allocated to the sector before.
According to him, the focus will be on what the money does and that should be reflected in the results.
Being his first day in office, he plans to hold meetings with the Sports department at the Ministry for a briefing, and then the different sports federations later, as a way to understand his new role and also learn from what is already in practice.
Ogwang concedes that the biggest earners in the world are sports personalities and it’s high time the country attends to sports professionally though its a contradiction with his “boss” the president HE Yoweri Museveni who classifies Sports in the leisure sector.
“World over the biggest paying jobs are sports men and women. We need to see how we can professionalize the way we manage our sports activities in the country both by the government and private sector as well.”
“I call upon all actors and players to come and we work together to support Sports because as a government we are doing our best.”
The minister is confident that the involvement of the private sector in Sports will transform the Country to another level and he bases this on some of the foreign leagues which are active because of the inclusiveness of the private sector.
In his tenure, Ogwang plans to have more emphasis put on the improvement of the already existing sports facilities around the country and also be able to reintroduce school competitions in the other sports disciplines that are not practiced since it is the beginning of talent identification.
“A talent is identified at a tender age and once it is identified, it must be guided through training. Once that person is trained then you can be able to have a world champion.” He concluded.
