Perpetua Murungweni
The Zimbabwe Football Association (ZIFA) Eastern Region has blamed economic situation in Zimbabwe as major reason why they are failing to get sponsorship.
ZIFA Eastern Region Vice Chairperson Wisdom Simba said they were trying all the best they could but all the efforts are yielding no desired results.
Simba was speaking to the press after the ZIFA Eastern Region annual general meeting recently at Great Zimbabwe Hotel Masvingo which only two teams, Ruwa and JM Bhusha football clubs were not in attendance.
“We have been trying to get sponsorship by engaging potential sponsorship but we failed. We discussed the matter with our members on how we lost sponsorship which we almost grabbed and concluded that the state of the economy is the reason,” said Simba
“When it comes to sponsorship we blame the economy we have tried day and night to engage potential sponsors and as you are aware, most companies within the region are headquartered in Harare. It becomes hard for us to get a sponsor because in most cases referred to Harare and it takes time to get there because of financial challenges, and when we get there we see most organizations are already sponsoring Northern region clubs.
“Potential companies like Zimbabwe Consolidated Diamond Company, a diamond mining company in Mutare, is headquartered in Harare and everything is administered in Harare so it’s tough for us to get at least one sponsor,” said Simba.
He further said the Eastern region has been operating for three years without a regional administrator since the retirement of Tedious Machawira in early 2020 thereby affecting operations and said they were going to fill up the post and they are conducting some interviews.
“It’s high time we fill up the gap left by Machawira and we are going to conduct interviews to fill up the post of the administrator, currently we have two people who have submitted their applications for consideration.
The delay in appointing the administrator was caused by numerous factors such as the Covid 19 Machawira retired in the Covid 19 era and we had to shut everything down until December 2021 where we picked up. Since we were coming from Covid we had so many challenges and we did not want commit ourselves because we were not sure whether we were going to play the season to complete,” said Simba.
He said the meeting was a success and the clubs managed to discuss other issues that affects the progress of the region.
“We managed to iron out issues that were causing problems in the beginning of the season and most are to do with discipline. We resolved that those with outstanding affiliate fees should pay up by mid-July or face suspension,”
“There were issues concerning match officials and we have resolved that matches which are top of the table clashes can be officiated by local referees, for the time being but in future we are going to have some inter-regional referees who will be officiating at such encounters.
“The clubs raised issues of transport money for referees which they felt that at times they were huge sums. The referee coordinator was there to clear the air and indicated that most of the referees are teachers and they are from rural schools,” said Simba.
