Sports council punishes bodies

Twenty-nine sports associations will not receive grants in the 2020/21 National Budget for failing to submit proposals outlining their programmes in the new fiscal year that begins on July 1.

Malawi National Council of Sports (MNCS) acting executive secretary Henry Mereka confirmed the development, saying only 13 of the 42 associations submitted their plans before January deadline.

He said football, table tennis, netball, basketball, taekwondo, chess, paralympic, golf and special Olympics associations are among the compliant affiliates.

Said Mereka: “We wrote all the associations to outline their programmes so if there’s a chance we can fund them. If we can’t fund them, it is still worthwhile that they inform us because we need to appreciate what they are doing to improve sports.”

He said the associations’ failure shows they do not have programmes in the financial year.

“So, in this case, we cannot fund their programmes if they ask for resources.”

Mereka said that in strategic meetings, the council will only be inviting associations that submitted their proposals.

“The planning meetings were supposed to start now, but we have been held back by the Covid-19. But once contained, we will invite these associations because they have shown seriousness,” he said.

Mereka said this was the first time for Sports Council to withhold funding to associations for failing to submit their programmes.

“We noticed that there was a lack of seriousness in some associations who misuse grants. If any associations cannot provide their programmes, how can they justify receiving the funding,” he said.

Athletics Association of Malawi which is said to have not filed its proposal blamed the failure on technical fault.

“If it didn’t reach the council I think it’s some technical fault to do with Internet. If anything, I will find out and try to resend it,” said general secretary Frank Chitembeya.

Weight-lifting and Body-Building president Bright Limani suspected they were not listed because they submitted the proposals late.

Mwakhele Kaliande, Weight-lifting and Body-Building vice-president, attributed their delay to executive committee elections.

“We did our elections in February. We were preoccupied with that. But we did send the proposal immediately after the elections,” he said.

In the prevailing fiscal year, the association shared around K700 million with Football Association of Malawi and Netball Association of Malawi getting a lion’s share of K300 million and K200 million respectively.

According to MNCS, hockey was the third biggest beneficiary at K60.5 million, draughts, cricket and golf received K18 million, K17 million and K13 million, respectively.

Malawi School Sport, Darts Association of Malawi and Volleyball Association of Malawi were other top earners getting K10 million, K8 million and K4.5 million, respectively