Fire RVG! FA Malawi to get direct funding from Parliament
Football Association of Malawi (FAM) will from this year start receiving direct funding from parliament unlike in the past whereby it was receiving its funding through the Malawi National Council of Sports.
Parliamentary Committee on Social and Community Welfare has since backed and given a nod to the idea the Football Association of Malawi (FAM) raised to the Parliamentary.
The support was rallied during a hearing into the challenges facing the national team and football in general, which the committee hosted at the Parliament Building in Lilongwe on Wednesday with FAM.
A high powered FAM delegation was led by President Walter Nyamilandu who was accompanied by his first Vice President James Mwenda, Committee Members Rashid Ntelera and Daud Suleman, General Secretary Alfred Gunda, Finance Director Chirstopher Mdolo and Competitions and Communications Director Gomezgani Zakazaka.
The FAM President told the gathering that football standards are currently poor in the country the sport does not receive much support from government and the corporate sector.
Currently, FAM receives the grants from the National Budget, which are meant for the Senior Men’s national team only, through the Council which disburses the allocated funds to 43 sports associations.
Nyamilandu said this set up means that football, the most followed sport, gets little when weighed against its budget.
For instance, he said, for the past three years, the Malawi National Football Team budget has been pegged at around K1 billion but only less than K300 million has been handed to the association.
“I would like to ask Parliament to start giving football and netball direct funding. This would help us to get a better package than the case with the current arrangement,” he said.
The committee’s Chairperson Richard Chimwendo Banda welcomed the proposal saying it could prove to be crucial in uplifting football.
“We are not underrating the Council but it would be better to take some of these burdens off it. Football and netball are the major sports and it would be sensible to allocate them funds separately,” said Chimwendo Banda.
Chimwendo pointed out that his committee will compile a report which will recommend the change in the financing arrangement.
However, The Committee challenged FAM to solve the Malawi National football team underperforming problems including the firing of the current head coach Ronny van Geneudgen (RVG).
Under RVG, the Senior Flames has played 20 games and only managed two wins.
Follow and Subscribe Nyasa TV :
So you expected a Coach to give you better results using an underfunded team? Come on! Why put the blame on the Whiteman when we all know who steals the money that was supposed to be used for uplifting the standard of Football in our country? DEAL WITH CORRUPTION FIRST, give FAM the money, let FAM employ a well qualified coach and pay him good money, pay the players good bonuses and then talk about the results. You cant expect a bumper harvest when the soil is so bad, infertile and you didn’t apply any fertilizer as well do the… Read more »
Mbava za fam izi. Dont give them directly. Ngati amaba za pa gate nanga mukawasiya independent? Secondly, if they are managing a game that is most followed, they should have the capacity to fund their activities through gate collections. Parliament, please think twice.