Referees face the axe: Gumede

officials who have been implicated in fixing matches.
“In the next two weeks we will be increasing the list of our own referees tainted by this fresh scandal,” Gumede said.
He said match-fixing was not peculiar to Zimbabwe adding that it was a vice that affected most countries. Gumede slammed club owners whom he accused of conniving with match commissioners to fix matches.
“It’s club owners who are issuing money via our respectable match commissioners who then give it to referees, saying ‘so and so wants his team to win, so can you create a few penalties so that they can win’,” said Gumede.
“It’s out of greed that people engage in these activities. There are people who have seen that there is a way that they can make money and to wish it away and say Zifa will make a resolution today and say and we will stop it, will be naïve of us.”
Zifa recently suspended two of its board members, Gift Banda and Patrick Hokonya, some referees and match officials after they were fingered in the local match-fixing scandal after they allegedly accepted bribes from club officials. Secretary for Education, Sport, Arts and Culture, Steven Mahere told the committee that a committee headed by former renowned referee Brighton Mudzamiri had been set up to investigate match-fixing in local football.
“The association has since instituted an investigation committee whose brief is to probe all leagues ranging from Division to the Premier Leagues,” said Mahere.
Gumede said the football mother body had since engaged a team of lawyers to look on constitutional amendments to capture concerns raised by Fifa and other stakeholders
He was responding to a question from Mutasa North MP, David Chimhini (MDC-T) on how Zifa amended its constitution.
“The last amendment was done in 2009 and it was fast-tracked in our view to facilitate changes Fifa wanted to see and to hold elections,” he said.
The committee chaired by Gokwe MP, Dorothy Mangami, asked the role of police saying what was the prudence of paying them when they were discharging their normal policing duties.
The committee also raised concerns with the senior police officers covering matches in order to be paid more money.
In response, Gumede said the police have argued that they would have deployed details who would not be ordinarily on duty and the higher their rank the more event organisers should pay.
He said they were still engaging the police to find ways of making sure soccer teams and the FA did not lose out.
Mahere said there was need for service providers to reduce their charges to allow the national football association and teams to retain some significant money from the matches.