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THE newly constituted Sports Council of Zambia (SCZ) board has finally cracked its first whip by disaffiliating all sport associations that have failed to pay their 2013 annual subscription fees.
SCZ board chairperson, Mwamba Kalenga said the deadline for paying affiliation fees was March 31 and those member associations that failed to pay up should consider themselves not part of the national sports family.
Kalenga said in an interview in Ndola on Friday that the new SCZ board would not condone indiscipline among its affiliates, hence the need to punish the non-affiliation paying organisations.
“Those (associations) who have not paid their affiliation fees are disaffiliated from the National Sports Council. Our deadline is always March 31 and we want associations to be responsible but we won’t tolerate indiscipline among the affiliates,” Kalenga, who was in Ndola to visit former SCZ board chairpersons, Tom Mtine and Julius Sakala, said.
He, however, could not name the victims from the 42 affiliate member sports organisations.
Kalenga also reiterated his call on member associations to desist from wrangling, warning any wrongdoers of punishment.
“Like I said, SCZ will not tolerate indiscipline among our affiliates. Therefore, any wrangling association will be punished accordingly,” he said.
The SCZ chief said the national sports authority would standby and watch athletes suffer because of lack of leadership in respective sports associations.
Kalenga said in some extreme cases, SCZ would be forced to dissolve some executive committees and appoint interim teams to run the affairs of the sports bodies.
On his visit to Mtine and Sakala, Kalenga said the idea was to embrace past leaders because: “you can’t have history without talking about people who were previously there.”
He said Mtine and Sakala offered to render their help to SCZ in its quest to develop sport across the nation as the task the current board was carrying was enormous.
Mtine and Sakala advised Kalenga’s team to also improve sport in peri-urban areas of Zambia where they felt there was still a lot of untapped talent.
Kalenga was accompanied by board members, Smart Mwitwa, Emmanuel Katebe and Joseph Silwamba and former Football Association of Zambia president, Michael Chiti.
The SCZ chairperson said the new board would be rolling out a programme where all sporting organisations would be looked at equitably.
Kalenga said the SCZ board would be disbursing funds and give equal representation to all affiliates.
With Government having a lot of other competing needs, Kalenga said SCZ also wanted to devise other ways of raising revenue for its operations.
He appealed to affiliate associations to always inform SCZ on time concerning their programmes whenever they were looking for financial assistance.
“We don’t want to be ambushed at the last minute. There will be no haphazard allocation of funds. Associations should be informing us on time,” Kalenga said.
During the tour of the Copperbelt where SCZ wanted to familiarise itself with sports administration and affiliates in the region, Kalenga also met the Zambia Golf Union president, Charles Mwanza and his executive.
Yesterday, Kalenga visited another veteran administrator, Patrick Chamunda, who is the first Zambian to sit on the International Olympic Committee board, in Kitwe.
Times of Zambia
