BY MACDONALD THOM:<\/p>\n
Members of Parliament (MPs) Thursday sought answers from Minister of Labour, Youth, Sports and Manpower Development, Francis Kasaila, on why the Flames Coach, Ronny van Geneugden (RVG) is not being fired despite the team\u2019s poor performance.<\/p>\n
However, RVG is on Football Association of Malawi\u2019s payroll courtesy of funding from world football governing body, Fifa.<\/p>\n
Mchinji North East MP, Alex Chitete, started the whole issue when he asked Kasaila as to why the ministry, through the Malawi National Council of Sports, is maintaining RVG despite what he described as \u201chumiliating, poor and regrettable performance\u201d of the team.<\/p>\n
\u201c[And] the way this coach was engaged is regrettable. We want him fired,\u201d Chitete said.<\/p>\n
Kasaila, however, said despite the team\u2019s poor performance, there was progress since RVG was engaged.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe coach is on a two-year contract. He has just concluded one year. He has replaced old players [with young ones]. He has changed philosophy of football to short-passes,\u201d Kasaila said.<\/p>\n
He also said measures are being taken to ensure that the development continues.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are complaints that the team is not scoring goals. There have been meetings with him on how the team can improve, as well as maintaining a lead. We will assess him at the end of the contract,\u201d Kasaila said.<\/p>\n
But Dowa East MP, Richard Chimwendo Banda, wondered why expatriate coaches get more time than locals.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had Ernest Mtawali who was fired after nine months only and we hear that he is fighting for his benefits in court. But an expatriate coach is given more support,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He added that expatriate coaches receive higher salaries than locals.<\/p>\n
But Kasaila said disparities in salaries may be because of how the coaches bargained.<\/p>\n
\u201cSalaries are bargained for. Let them [local coaches] put their mark higher. It is not possible to expect us to give the same salary to all coaches [we engage],\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He also stated that termination of RVG\u2019s contract may be costly.<\/p>\n
\u201cTermination of contracts leads to loss of [the] government\u2019s money. If we terminate it, we could pay as much as we could in two years,\u201d Kasaila said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BY MACDONALD THOM: Members of Parliament (MPs) Thursday sought answers from Minister of Labour, Youth, Sports and Manpower Development, Francis Kasaila, on why the Flames Coach, Ronny van Geneugden (RVG) is not being fired despite the team\u2019s poor performance. However, RVG is on Football Association of Malawi\u2019s payroll courtesy of funding from world football governing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":44144,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67726"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67726\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67745,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67726\/revisions\/67745"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}