Parliamentary body to fight poor sports administration
The Parliamentary Committee on Social and Community Affairs new chairperson Savel Kafwafwa has said they will focus on pushing for increased funding towards sports and also fight poor administration in the industry.
The committee, whose deputy is Kondwani Chitekwe (Ntchisi East), is tasked to supervise the sports sector which is currently plagued with poor funding, which analysts say leads to poor preparations and failure on the international stage.
In an interview last week, Kafwafwa observed that the sports sector has stagnated not only because of poor funding but also mal-administration.
“Our committee will go beyond funding. We will take to task the sports administrators to make sure that we address the issues of poor administration and corruption,” he said.
Kafwafwa cited allegations of gate revenue abuses and fraud in clubs as some of the examples of poor management.
“My major concern is to do with issues of gate collections, sale of fake tickets and abuses of club/sports funds. Real sports development will never be realised until we root out corrupt administrators.”
The previous committee, whose mandate ended prior to the May 21 Tripartite Elections, championed for stand-alone votes for netball and football in the National Budget.
Meanwhile, Kafwafwa has also promised to push for the implementation of the proposals of the previous committee led by Richard Chimwendo Banda.
“Logic tells me that we start funding what we think we are good at; hence, netball will be our priority. It’s sad that our ladies do not get the required funding,” the Dedza North parliamentarian said.
Kafwafwa also spoke of the need to step up efforts of improving minority sports disciplines such as athletics.
Netball Association of Malawi (NAM) general secretary Carol Bapu said they are excited that the committee will push for funding increment. “This is an area where we lack the most. The Queens slumped to position nine on the world rankings not because the team did badly, but because the team was inactive. We need to take part in ranking games apart from competitions like the World Cup and Africa Netball Championship,” she said.
