The Minister for Information, Youth, Culture and Sports, Dr Fenella Mukangara, will be the first person to race the Queen’s Baton Relay at the National Stadium in Dar es Salaam on January 19, this year.
Minister for Information, Youth, Culture and Sports, Dr Fenella Mukangara
The baton, which is the 2014 Commonwealth Games curtain raiser, is due in the city on January 18 from Kigali, Rwanda.
The Queen’s Baton Relay Organising Committee chairman, Ghullam Rashid, who is also the President of the Tanzania Committee (TOC), said for the first time in history the baton will on January 20 be raced in Zanzibar where it will be received by President Ali Mohamed Shein.
According to the the baton’s itinerary, on arrival in the city it will go straight to the International School of Tanganyika (IST) at Upanga where it will be welcomed by various sports activities.
The following day it will be taken to the National Stadium where several sports and cultural group will be in attendance to give it a rousing welcome. From the National Stadium the baton will be raced across several streets of the city and finally to the State House where it will be received by President Jakaya Kikwete.
On January 20, the baton will visit Zanzibar and from there it will proceed to Seychelles. Rashid said that apart from the minister, other people lined up to race it include UNICEF representative Jama Gulaid, British High Commissioner Dianna Melrose and former Commonwealth Games medallists.
The Queen’s Baton Relay was launched at Buckingham Palace on October 9, last year and will visit all 70 Commonwealth nations and territories ahead of the opening ceremony in Glasgow, Scotland on July 23, this year.
Tanzania is expected to send seven teams — athletics, boxing, cycling, swimming, judo, weightlifting and Paralympic athletes – to Glasgow. But much depends on qualifying marks and the government budget.
At the last Games in New Delhi, India in 2010, the country was represented by athletics, boxing, swimming teams as well as Paralympic athletes but all returned home empty handed.
This is the fifth time the Queen’s Baton Relay is visiting Tanzania. It did so prior to the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 2002 Games in Manchester, England, 2006 Games in Melbourne, Australia and 2010 Games in New Delhi.
By COSMAS MLEKANI, Tanzania Daily News