Football Association of Malawi (FAM) has warned Silver Strikers FC with an unspecified action for barring a gate management firm M and C from managing the gates during their Standard Bank Knockout Cup quarter-final match against Blue Eagles at Silver Stadium in Lilongwe last Saturday.
Silver chased the gate-management firm’s officials and instead placed cashiers from their sponsors Reserve Bank of Malawi (RBM), a development which irked FAM.
“M and C are a firm recognised by FAM to manage gate takings at all venues, but we were surprised that Silver Strikers barred the firm from doing their work. We are looking into this incident and we will act on accordingly,” said FAM general secretary Suzgo Nyirenda in an interview on Tuesday.
The refusal by Silver to engage M and C nearly made FAM to shift the match to Nankhaka Stadium in Area 30 according to FAM.
Nyirenda said if the club (Silver) has its own firm, it should have applied to FAM when it advertised for bidders interested in managing gates.
However, Silver officials claimed that they had communicated to FAM prior to the match about engaging their own firm for the exercise as agreed with their sponsors.
“We have our own people who do such work. We have made it plain to FAM that we are not happy with firms which manage gate-takings. Every time an outside firm comes to manage the gates, the revenue does not reflect the attendance. But when we put in our own people, the revenue is better,” said the clubs’ vice-general secretary Madalitso Mazombwe.
He also claimed not to have seen the advert which appeared on the association’s facebook page and website.
“Had it been advertised in the newspapers, surely we could have seen it and applied,” he said. n
