Teams reject financial report
The long-awaited Super League of Malawi (Sulom) Annual General Meeting (AGM) took place yesterday at Mpira Stadium in Chiwembe, Blantyre but it was not without drama as team officials rejected the financial report.
The teams turned down a financial statement that Sulom Treasurer Malinda Chinyama was supposed to present claiming that they did not send them the report in advance for scrutiny.
“Nobody from our side received the report as normally is the case, so we cannot proceed discussing it,” Mighty Wanderers’ Humphrey Mvula said.
This prompted Sulom president and moderator of the meeting Tiya SombaBanda to adjourn proceedings to allow the teams to discuss the issue.
After about 30 minutes, the meeting resumed but club officials stood to their ground not to proceed discussing the report.
The consensus was reached that the financial report be deferred to next week Saturday.
“We will convene the meeting on Saturday with Southern Region-based officials attending physically while others joining us virtually,” Somba-Banda said.
Sulom General Secretary Williams Banda said the delay to send the report was partly due to teams’ late response to an audit report.
“We sent them the audit report on April 16, 2022 and they delayed to respond resulting in our treasurer also taking time to send the financial report,” Banda said.
The meeting then proceeded with a number of issues being deliberated.
Among other contentious issues were the broadcasting rights, gate management at the stadiums, constitutional review and how Sulom has been managing the league.
The teams finally agreed to come up with a task force to look at constitutional review and gate management.
“There is need for a constitutional review because the one we are using was formulated in 2015 and we need to revise it so that we can be in line with how things are being done now. There is also need to look at the gate management issue as you are aware that there have been issues of theft of gate revenues, so these people will look into these,” Somba-Banda said, further claiming that the two task forces would be constituted after the meeting.
Somba-Banda also said they delayed to have the AGM because of financial challenges.
“Ninety per cent of our revenue comes from gate collections, so you understand that due to the Covid pandemic, most games have been played without spectators and this affected us financially.
To conduct an AGM, we need about K25 million and we have used about K18 million for this meeting. It is because our colleagues, Football Association of Malawi, provided us the venue,” he said.
Somba-Banda further said there is need for teams to work together on broadcasting rights issue for teams to maximise on revenue.
He said, last season, about K33 million was generated from broadcasting rights but media houses were yet to pay K29 million.
Dedza Dynamos ViceGeneral Secretary Kumbukani Banda expressed satisfaction with how the AGM went on.
“We are happy that most of the contentious issues were tackled. We have made our proposals and we hope that Sulom and other stakeholders will consider them for the betterment of our game,” Banda said.
