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Petros Kausiyo Deputy Sports Editor
TROUBLED Premier Soccer League debutants ZPC Kariba have been granted a further extension to regularize their affiliation to the top-flight body after the electricity men yesterday insisted they were ready to play in the elite league.
ZPC Kariba, then under the guidance of Jostein Mathuthu won the Zifa Northern Region Division One’s sole ticket to the Premiership last year.
But the Kariba electricity men who have since appointed Saul Chaninuka as coach, got off to a false start to life in the Premiership after failing to either pay their affiliation fees to the league or even submit a register of their players for their maiden dance with the top-flight.
PSL chief executive Kenny Ndebele said although they had given the newcomers until yesterday to regularise their position, ZPC Kariba had written back to them to ratify that they would indeed be playing in the league this season.
Ndebele who admitted the PSL’s concern over the delays in the club’s affiliation being sorted said ZPC Kariba had indicated that they had had been awaiting the green light from their parent company before confirming their participation in the league.
“We wrote to them last week and they had said they needed time to put together their squad and their set up.
“We had given them up to today (yesterday) to confirm their participation in the 2014 PSL programme and they had been waiting to get authorization from their parent company so they have since written another letter and they have said they are keen to take part and they wanted us to give them just a little more time.
“So we have given them until Friday 21 March to pay their affiliation,’’ Ndebele said.
Despite granting ZPC Kariba a further five days until Friday to put their house in order, Ndebele said they would not afford the club or any other team a chance to seek an extension to formalise player registration.
“While we have given them an extension up to Friday there will be no such facility in terms of the March 26 deadline for all the player registration to have been completed and we have made this clear to them,’’ Ndebele said.
The PSL chief executive also said it was imperative that club executives understood the league’s statutes which have been realigned to fit in with the amended Zifa constitution.
Ndebele cited Article 7 of the PSL statues which deals with “Conduct of bodies and officials’’ part of which read:
“The bodies and Officials of PSL must observe the Statutes, regulations, directives, decisions and the Code of Ethics of ZIFA, of CAF/COSAFA and of FIFA in their activities’’.
PSL and their member clubs, Ndebele also said cannot thus operate in isolation.
“As PSL we are an affiliate of Zifa and we have had to realign our constitution to meet the requirements of the amended Zifa constitution that has been crafted with a strong input from Fifa.
“It is also important that club officials read through the PSL constitution and understand its requirements because we have noticed that some clubs believe that they can just nominate any committee member or any member from their team to be on the board of governors.
“Only senior people who are in a position to make decisions at clubs like chairman or president ought to be named as governors because you do not want to have a meeting of governors where junior people will attend and when they go back to their teams, the resolutions are neither implemented nor respected.
“In fact clubs should follow what the PSL has done and ensure that their constituencies fall in line with that of the mother body,’’ Ndebele said.
Article 21 of the PSL constitution which deals with delegates and votes also states that:
“1 The Congress is composed of 16 delegates. The number of delegates is allocated as follows:
a) The 16 clubs of the Premier Soccer League; each 1 delegate
2 Delegates must be the Chairman/ Chairperson or President to the Member that they represent and be appointed or elected by the appropriate body of that Member. They must also be able to produce evidence of this upon request.
3 Each delegate of the same category of Member has an equal number of votes in the Congress. Only the delegates present are entitled to vote. Voting by proxy or by letter is not permitted’’.
Online Reporter