Police have dispersed a motorbike-racing event, ‘Whistling Morans’, in Athi River for failure to adhere to government directives.
According to a letter dated September 23, the organisers of the event failed to comply with safety requirements by the Government and International Motorsport Governing Bodies and also Covid-19 protocols.
“Following your recommendation that the event be canceled on account of the foregoing concerns and considering that Motorsports is a highly regulated space owing to the safety requirements by the Government and International Motorsport Governing Bodies, a directive is hereby issued to cancel the event until all the prerequisites set by the Ministry and the Federation are met. This will secure the safety of participants and maintain the standards required to organise a competitive motorsport event in Kenya,” said Sports PS Joe Okudo.
“By a copy of this letter, the organisers, sponsors, and members of the public associated with this event are notified that following the organisers’ non-compliance with Governing Rules and Regulations and following MSCF’s advisory to Government to protect participants and the public from the pitfalls of this unsupervised high-risk competitive event, it is herewith canceled.
Breach of this directive will attract the stipulated consequences. A report of compliance be filed with the Ministry on Monday 27th September 2021 by the organisers through the Registrar of Sports.”
Initially, the organisers moved to court and successfully obtained orders to have the event go on as scheduled.
The orders also required that the OCS Athi River facilitate the success of the event. The orders were issued on Friday, September 24, 2021.
The police however disregarded the orders and teargassed participants who had attended the event.
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