By Phillip Pasula
MZUZU-(MaraviPost)-Super League of Malawi (SULOM) President, Fleetwood Haiya, has said a number of things have been achieved during the first 90 days since he was elected on 25th February, 2023 after promising to “Revive, Reform and Rebrand” the league.
Haiya was speaking during a press briefing held at Grand Palace Hotel in the city of Mzuzu on Friday morning.
He said the Super League of Malawi has managed to secure offices at Ginnery Corner in Blantyre where its Secretariat will be housed and regional offices have also been secured at Bingu National Stadium in Lilongwe and Luwinga Technical Centre in Mzuzu. According to Haiya, these offices will improve accessibility of SULOM services by clubs and other stakeholders including cooperating partners.
“All key Secretariat staff such as Chief Executive Officer, Finance and Administration Manager including Marketing Officer has been recruited. The recruitment of regional staff is currently underway. You will therefore agree that the new offices and the recruitment of key Secretariat staff mark the full operationalization of a professional SULOM Secretariat that will propel the reform agenda,” said Haiya.
He went on to reveal that SULOM has established a subvention fund where each of the 16 clubs will receive a total of MK9 million that translates to a total of MK144 million per season and that so far, clubs have accessed MK4.5 million.
On this, said Haiya: “This has eased administrative, logistical challenges that clubs have been facing in the past years. We will continue to explore more opportunities and partnerships to increase the subvention fund.”
It was also revealed that formulation of a policy that guides and paves way for the introduction of electronic ticketing platforms was underway.
“We believe that when fully rolled out, this will be a game changer as it will not only bring sanity to gate revenue management but also reduce fraud and leakages thereby giving clubs more revenue than ever before,” remarked Haiya.
“We are lobbying with relevant authorities and associations such as the Malawi National Council of Sports (MNCS) and the Football Association of Malawi (FAM) to consider revising downwards their gate takings and increase teams’ gate takings as the current sharing is not only unfavourable but also unreasonable. We lobbied with government to consider finalising Zomba Stadium and we got a commitment that the stadium will be ready for use by December, 2023,” he added.
Haiya replaced Tiya Somba Banda in highly contested elections that took place in February this year.
