Over 150 Mercenaries Ejected from Copa Coca Cola Competition

More than 150 players have been disqualified from the Soroti district Copa Coca Cola schools football tournament for being none students. The players were eliminated during the verification exercise, which started on Saturday.

 

The verification exercise was scheduled to last for two days but it stretched into Monday due to various irregularities delaying the kick off. URN saw teachers from several schools dejected after most of their players were eliminated from the tournament due to lack of proper identification documents.

 

Most of the players from government aided schools didn't have any form of identification. Some of the schools had as less as five genuine players. A number of the suspected mercenaries could neither recall the name of their head teachers nor their subject combination.

 

Samuel Adome, Vice chairperson Technical Soroti district Head teachers sports Association says most of the schools brought mercenaries. He says schools such as Soroti SS, St. Pius Vocational training Institute and Aloet High school amongst others only had five genuine students.

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Daniel Esingu, the Vice chairperson Administration blames the delayed kick off to the late arrival of schools for verification. He says that, they are to continue again with the verification due to issues of impersonation.

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Charles Peter Opolot, the deputy head teacher Soroti Secondary  School tried to plead to have his players cleared saying that the issue of identity cards would be sorted out later. At least 21 players from two teams from Soroti Secondary school had no identity cards.  This morning, students from Soroti Secondary school gathered at Soroti sports ground to observe the fate of their two teams. 

John Robert Oluka, a sports teacher at Alliance High school blamed the organizing committee for favoring Government schools and sidelining private schools during the verification exercise. He claimed that, the committee had cleared some students who were studying in tertiary institutions.

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Patrick Aberu,  a sports lover in Soroti, blamed the Verification team for accepting to conduct verification for over three days giving room to schools to field mercenaries, which according to him is killing young talents .