No hope

Minister of Labour, Youth Sports and Manpower Development Francis Kasaila says his ministry’s efforts to engage NAM sponsors—Rach Family Trust (RFT)—on its failure to honour contractual obligations, have hit a snag.

Netball Association of Malawi (NAM) and RFT signed a K600 million five-year pact last year, which, among other things, would see the latter giving the netball governing body K120 million for the Queens and other netball programmes annually, but over a year down the line, the trust has only released K15 million.

This led to NAM seeking government’s intervention on the matter, but Kasaila yesterday said they have given up hope on engaging RFT.

“We tried to engage them through the Directorate of Sports, but all our efforts proved futile and our position is that there is no hope in this deal.

“The Directorate of Sports has advised NAM that the best way forward would be to negotiate termination of the contract and look for another serious potential sponsor,” said the minister.

In a separate interview on Friday, NAM president Khungekile Matiya also said they had not made any progress.

“All our efforts to engage them on the matter have been fruitless because they have not been forthcoming.

“What we are exploring now is contract termination so that we can look for another sponsor.

“The challenge is that whenever we contact them, they come up with promises which they do not fulfil,” she said.

In January, Matiya told our sister paper, Weekend Nation that they first lodged a complaint to Malawi National Council of Sports (MNCS) after RFT did not fund the Queens’ participation at the African Championship and the Fast5 World Netball series last year.

“We presented our budgets prior to the games, but we did not get the funding. So, we asked council to help persuade the sponsor to honour the contractual obligations,” she said then.

Matiya said lack of RFT support was affecting them since they are forced to spend government allocation on national team programmes instead of supporting other developmental and operational programmes.

RFT chairperson Ravi Rach had not responded to our questionnaire by press time yesterday.

The contract states that either side can terminate the contract if it feels the other party is breaching its obligations.

It reads: “Notwithstanding anything contained in this agreement, either party may terminate the agreement if the other party is in breach of any of the obligations.”