New council Chief Executive Officer urges bodies to be accountable

Source: The Times Group Malawi
Author: Mphatso Malidadi

New Malawi National Council of Sports (MNCS) Chief Executive Officer Henry Kamata has asked associations to be accountable.

Kamata made the remarks after holding separate interface meetings with representatives of six associations at Kamuzu Institute for Sports in Lilongwe on Thursday.

"From council's perspective is the issue of accountability. Most associations fail to account for public money that they are given. I have encouraged them to be accountable. We need to account for every penny," Katama said.

Kamata also said there was a need to invest in infrastructure, administrative and technical areas.

"Generally, we do not have infrastructure to anchor our sports in the country. So it is something to start looking for the future. The other thing is we need to invest in technical officials.

"If we are to develop sports, we need competent people. Administrative and technical competency we need to build the capacity of those that are running associations," Kamata said.

On his part, Malawi Olympic Committee President Jappie Mhango hailed the interface saying it has potential to help Malawi develop in sports.

"I am very happy that after a few days in the office the new CEO has found it fit to meet and I think this is the right thing to do.

"If we are going to have such interface meetings I think sports will have a lot of transformation going forward," Mhango said.

Mhango said the meeting helped the stakeholders to strategise going forward.

"Sport is an important sector and big business. If the country is to reap from sports then we have to start looking at sports differently. In terms of investment we need to invest massively," he said.

Netball Association of Malawi (Nam) General Secretary Isaac Chimwala said they had fruitful discussion.

"In the course of our discussion we were able to see that we have an insightful CEO. His input and direction. We need to have active programmes for the youth because that is our future. We need to divert our attention to the grassroots level," Chimwala said.

Chess Association of Malawi President Mpilo said they were able to explain challenges to the new MNCS CEO.

"It was very good that the new CEO called for this meeting. It gave us a good interface with him where we explained what challenges we meet as minority sports.

"He has given us clear guidelines on what direction the council is taking going forward," Mizere said.

Meanwhile, Kamata will also hold interface meetings with other associations next.