The Sunday Mail
Ishemunyoro Chingwere
THE Minister of Sport and Recreation Makhosini Hlongwane has called on football authorities to strive for professionalism.
He made the call at the 2015 Castle Lager Soccer Star of the Year banquet where Chicken Inn midfielder Danny “Deco” Phiri was crowned king of local football, taking over the mettle vacated by ZPC Kariba’s Dennis Dauda.
Hlongwane said Government is concerned with issues of governance in sport.“We are concerned about the issues of governance in sport. Governance and clean sport are very important and we think that is a point to emphasize,” he said.
“We must begin to understand, in a standardised way, what a club for football is because we think that a football club necessarily must be a source of employment and therefore it’s important that these clubs are registered properly, that issues of contract are respected.
“We realise that football being our biggest sport code in the country, if well organised and structured could very easily be a source of employment for many of our youths.“Elite performance, which is our Premier Soccer League, I think we are close to where we want to be and Twine Phiri (PSL chairman) you are doing a good job.
“But going down we have division two, division three . . .we think that we must begin to commercialise college sport so that it also becomes a strong source of employment.” The minister said Government is also worried with issues of doping in sport and urged sportsmen to desist from such practices.
“We want clean sport as far as all layers of football administration is concerned, whether we are talking about football at the level of association, in this case Zifa, whether we are talking about football at the level of the league, in this case the PSL. . . we want clean sport.
“We are concerned at the ministry about players’ welfare and one of the things that we are going to be proposing is a framework that links elite performance to some kind of educational program in order to make sure that beyond performance our players are not paupers,” he said.
