Take action against Penampang Safa for alleged irregularities — action group
KOTA KINABALU: Penampang Football Action Group (PFAG) is urging the Malaysia Sports Commissioner and Sabah FA to take action against the Penampang District Football Association (Safa Penampang) for alleged irregularities and failure to comply with its constitution.
PFAG president Adelaide Cornelius alleged that Safa Penampang would be holding a closed Annual General Meeting among certain members only who are aligned with their objectives.
He urged the Malaysia Sports Commissioner and Sabah FA to interfere and postpone the AGM which was scheduled for November 10.
“As we understand and suspected, Safa Penampang may be conducting a closed AGM among those who are aligned to them only.
“We request that the AGM be open and held in full transparency and that membership drive must be conducted to include more members so as to enable them to vote.
“If not then we suggest the AGM to be postponed until such time that new members are accommodated,” he said after conducting a meeting with the group’s members here, recently.
Adelaide also said that many people wished to join Safa Penampang but were denied the opportunity of membership.
He alleged that the current leadership in Safa Penampang failed to live up to expectations and that very little effort had been made to organise development programmes.
“We (PFAG) justify our existence in view of the ineffectiveness and inactiveness of Safa Penampang. They have not done any football development, no football tournaments, no coaching clinic and no referee courses but yet Penampang is known to be very active in football.
“The various programmes held in Penampang were conducted voluntarily by individuals and clubs. They have nothing to do with Safa Penampang,” he said.
Adelaide said such programmes like the football academy, referee course, coaching clinic and football tournaments were all conducted by parties other than Safa Penampang.
He questioned Safa Penampang’s process of determining members and alleged that no membership forms were ever distributed.
“Many people have contributed so much to football development and yet they are being sidelined. They were not even invited to become members. This is very distressing.
“There is no administrative office that we know of and therefore we propose that the previous district officer Luvita Koisun be allowed to take over, but such notion was brushed aside by the present committee,” he said.
Towards this end, Adelaide said that PFAG wanted the district officer to lead Safa Penampang as the DO would be the most appropriate person for the job.
“Traditionally, it is the DO who leads Safa Penampang and we feel it will be easier in terms of logistics for the association to operate under the DO,” he said.