SRC to investigate Zina

THE Sport and Recreation Commission is reportedly about to investigate the Zimbabwe Netball Association over possible abuse of funds following revelations that the association has not been paying players on national duty allowances and also that those injured on same assignments meet their own bills.

This publication carried an article last week where parents and some coaches raised concern over the failure by the Letticia Chipandu led executive to pay the players while also it has been abandoning those that get injured while representing Zimbabwe on various national duty commitments.

“We got disturbed with the news that Zina is not giving their players some allowances and also their failure to take care of injured players and we might soon institute full scale investigations into how they have been using funds which they get from the Government. You must remember that Zina is also one of the 29 associations that were found to be partially compliant with the SRC Act and one of the missing things was the issue to do with financial statements which they failed to produce,” said a member of the SRC board.

After the article came out, Zina president, Chipandu, who had ignored questions for two days on claims raised against her leadership, suddenly responded and claimed that players are given allowances from time to time depending on their budget.

“We do pay players depending on how much we will be having at our disposal and we do pay medical bills for our injured players and always have a qualified physiotherapist,” she said. However, the players and other coaches still insisted that the claims are not true and challenged Chipandu to provide physical proof of her claims.

“Its all lies, if she says Zina pays allowances and medical bills she must provide evidence of that. We have a number of players who are taking care of their own bills and as for allowances I don’t even want to talk about it because she too knows it deep down in her heart that its not true. Maybe as president she has been told that players do receive allowances by some of her committee members but we know that has not been happening,” said a coach.

The Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture, Makhosini Hlongwane, is on record as saying the year 2017 is a year of good corporate governance and sports associations found not in line with that can and will be deregistered.