PSL bosses under the spotlight

Sports Reporter
THE emergency committee that has been running the Premier Soccer League for the last two years now stands accused of turning a blind eye to the extravagant spending at the Premiership, including an outrageous payment of at least $8 000 in monthly rentals for their offices.

The country’s top-flight league has been under an ad-hoc leadership since its leader Peter Dube was suspended by ZIFA in November 2016.

Former Dynamos president Kenny Mubaiwa, Chicken Inn boss Lifa Ncube and Triangle chairman Lovemore Matikinyidze have been running the emergency committee until the DeMbare boss tendered his resignation from the club in June this year.

Ncube has been leading the league’s financial portfolio, while Matikinyidze has been heading the league’s human resources portfolio.

It was this same emergency committee, which in January last year, extended the contract of Kenny Ndebele as the league’s chief executive, giving him a fresh mandate to lead the top-flight league’s secretariat for a further three years.

The emergency committee have been thrown under the spotlight after it emerged this week that the PSL have blown a fortune of more than half a million dollars on a controversial scheme to keep renting offices in Harare and Bulawayo, when they could have invested the money in securing their properties for use as their homes.

Remarkably, the PSL were said to even have rejected an offer from Mbada Diamonds, when they came in as their partners in 2011 to sponsor the league’s flagship knock-out tournament, with the miners floating an idea to inject funds towards the acquisition of a property for the league to use as their headquarters without having to waste money on rentals. Even a proposal to the league’s former leadership that a $400 000 injection from SuperSport in 2011 be used to buy a property in Harare’s Livingstone Avenue, which was then costing $280 000 and would have needed an extra $20 000 for renovations, was also rejected by the league’s leaders.

The leadership’s argument was owning their property, which they could afford as a long-term investment, would expose them to litigation from their creditors, especially the Sports Commission which they owed some gate levies and the investment would be lost to the legal processes.

However, the PSL chose to move from the City Sports Centre, where they were renting two rooms as their offices, to a house at 36 Midlothian Avenue in Harare, which they have been renting since 2009 and whose monthly rentals have torched a storm.

The house in Eastlea is owned by a farmer, who initially rented it out for $700, but by five years ago had hiked the rentals to about $3 000 a month because he argued those were the prevailing market rates and the rentals. The rentals for the two PSL offices in Harare and Bulawayo have since shot to more than $8 000 a month. The PSL offices in Bulawayo are located in Suite 214 Century House, between 10th Avenue and Jason Moyo Avenue and are just two rooms on the same wing with the head offices of the company of the league’s chief executive, Ndebele, who runs Ken Estate Agents.

Rentals in Eastlea for a full house, according to market rates, are unlikely to be more than $1 000 a month, but it is believed that the top-flight league has been paying more than five to seven times the average rentals for the use of that property.

Given that the PSL have been using the property for years now, there had been reports that they acquired the house which they converted into their headquarters, but it has since been established that they have been renting the premises at a huge cost.

It has also emerged that Ncube, the member of the PSL emergency committee in charge of finance, event went to the extent of sending a memorandum to his colleagues expressing concerns over the amounts which the league’s leaders were handing themselves as allowances.

Ncube was concerned that the huge amounts which were going into allowances could trigger an uproar from the league’s membership and fans who could argue that this was tantamount to fleecing the top-flight league.