By SHAMAOMA MUSONDA

.Mawere

SPORTS Minister Moses Mawere has called for proper accountability and transparency from associations and further warned against endless bickering.
Speaking in Kitwe yesterday, the Minister said Government was disturbed by the endless reports of associations not accounting for monies they collect and engage in squabbles.
He said the need for power and control of resources was leading to administrators fighting and taking each other to the courts of law.
“This is an undesirable situation and as a government, we are not pleased. If we see failure to account for money and ceaseless squabbles, we shall take measures that may not be well received but they will be necessary,” he said.
Mawere hinted that if the money was coming from private entities, Government would tell the funders to suspend support to the associations because sport was in the end suffering.
He said government wanted to see sport develop and not administrators fighting and called on the private entities to keep his Ministry informed over sponsorship to associations so that all who receive money are made to account for every ngwee received.
The Minister said this at Sandvik Mining in his continued tour of Copperbelt sports facilities and added that sport was one sector that had parties taking each other to court a lot.
“These people are always in court and you have administrators using money meant for sports development to hire lawyers to defend their wrong positions,” he said.
Sandvik Mining is one of the major sponsors of the ongoing Mopani-RedPath Zambia Open golf tournament been held at the Nkana Golf Club in Kitwe and sponsored the Wednesday Pro-Am.
Director for administration and services for Sandvik Mining- Central Africa George Chilufya said his firm was a keen sponsor of the Zambia Amateur Athletics Association (ZAAA) organised Inter-Company Relay (ICR) but pulled out because of squabbles that engulfed the association at some point.
“It’s good you touched on squabbles because it is a matter of concern. I mentioned earlier that we supported the ICR but we stopped because we didn’t want to be associated with squabbles. So we took our Corporate Social Responsibility to the hospital and support wellness for just our staff internally,” he said.
Mawere toured Mufulira Rugby and tennis clubs and Mufulira Golf Club where he took time to showcase his golfing skills.

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