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| Sports |
| Fam to pay fines from Fifa grant |
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by
Oris Chimenya, 02 December 2004
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11:40:06
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Football Association of Malawi (Fam) has said it has come to an agreement with Fifa to start paying the K1.1 million ($10,185) fine imposed by the world soccer body for fan hooliganism in instalments starting from January.
The fine was slapped on the local soccer governing body as punishment for the ugly violence that erupted after the World Cup and Africa Nations Cup qualifier against Tunisia on October 9 at Chichiri Stadium in Blantyre. The match ended in a 2-2 draw after the Flames had taken a 2-0 lead at half time.
The deadline for payment was Tuesday this week.
The cut on the quarterly grant comes after another one imposed on Fam because of government’s failure to waive tax on imported materials for the Fifa-sponsored K20 million Chiwembe Goal Project in Limbe.
The tax on imported materials for the project totalled K13 million.
Fam general secretary Roosevelt Mpinganjira said in an interview on Thursday the agreement to have the fine paid in portions from the $250,000 (about K27 million) Financial Assistance Programme (Fap) which Fifa provides, was reached at a meeting held in Johannesburg, South Africa on November 18.
“We discussed it with Fifa delegates at the Long Term Planning Futuro III course which we had in South Africa. We asked them that they should be cutting the fines from Fap and they agreed,” said Mpinganjira.
The Fifa grant is disbursed in instalments of K6.8 million in the months of January, April, July and October. This means that the quarterly grant to the local association for the whole of next year will be K6.55 million after subtracting the instalments.
But the figures to be subtracted from the quarterly grants is likely to be higher due to the K13 million tax fine which is also being cut from the same K27 million Fap.
But newly-elected Fam president Walter Nyamilandu said although the funding cuts will affect the association, the body will try to find ways of fund-raising to fill in the shortfalls.
Meanwhile, Fifa is yet to release another report on the violence which happened during the Caf Champions League match between Bakili Bullets and Enyimba of Nigeria at the same stadium on October 16. The match ended in a 1-1 draw.
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