EXCLUSIVE

The National University of Rwanda (UNR) is set to analyze several of the sports bursaries that were issued to different students, Times Sport has learnt.

The university Rector, Silas Rwakabamba confirmed the development on Tuesday saying that many students have benefited from the bursaries without participating in any kind of sport at the campus.

Rwakabamba said that legal ways will be put in place to make sure that students who really have the talents gets the privilege to get the bursaries from SFAR, the national body responsible for offering scholarships.

According to the former KIST Rector, most students on the sports bursary scheme joined the university on personal relationships with the responsible administrators who were in charge at the time.

"For example there are many students on the bursaries for swimming sports yet there is not any swimming pool at the campus,” Rwakabamba acknowledged.

UNR has been offering bursaries in the different sports disciplines which include football, volleyball, basketball, rugby, swimming, karate and handball.

Talking to some of the concerned students but who wished their identities to remain synonymous, they think it’s unfair to raise such old issues at this time since these bursaries were offered to them long time ago.

However, their main worry lies in the fact that they could be suspended or expelled before finishing their respective courses after spending a years at the university.

"Why is this thing coming up right now, why didn’t they deny us admissions from the beginning” lamented by one of the students who joined the university on the sports bursary ticket.

However, other students think it is wrong to blame them all for the current poor state sports at the university since some students are enjoying what they the really did not work for.

They say it could be the reason why some games like football have lagged failed develop because some bursaries are given out to incompetent students, who claim to be footballer yet in actual sense they can’t play competitively.

"We don’t receive any special treatment like feeding and transportation as it should ideally be” complained some of the students on the university volleyball team that participated in last weekend’s ‘tournoi international des Disarus’.

Though many sports bursaries are offered at UNR, a few sports disciplines have excelled in some of the national league including their football team which is currently playing in the second division where they lead group A with 25 points from 13 games played so far.

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