By MWANGALA LISELI –

THE Netball Association of Zambia (NAZ) has trimmed its budget for the national team’s Sydney 2015 World Cup outing from K2.1 million to K1.8 million.
NAZ general secretary Pritchard Ngoma said the budget had to be reduced as a way of cutting down on some planned expenditures.
Ngoma said yesterday that NAZ had a lot of events lined up this year and it had already started raising the money to prepare for the same.
He said NAZ had since engaged some stakeholders to assist with the raising of funds and that so far the response was encouraging.
“We have a huge task this year and we have engaged stakeholders to help us raise the resources to meet our budget of K1.8 million which was previously at K2.1 million. I am positive that we will meet this target,” he said.
Ngoma said the association was currently preparing for the Diamond Challenge scheduled for South Africa in June which the national team will use as of preparations for the Africa Netball Championship slated for June in Namibia and the World Cup to be held in August.
He said NAZ was confident the team would perform well at these international events.
Meanwhile, national team assistant coach Kelly Mwanza said he had assembled a strong squad and that the technical bench would have a headache when picking the final 12-member team.
Mwanza said Elizabeth Mwaba of Napsa and Gift Bunga from Green Buffaloes have been drafted into the provisional squad to replace the four who were dropped last month.
He said the two have been brought into add to the competition in camp before the final squad is picked.