With the National Women’s Football Championship set to start this coming Monday, there appears to be unresolved logistical issues between Prophet Bushiri’s Goshen Trust, which is a co-sponsor, and Football Association of Malawi (FAM) on how the championship will be rolled out and both sides have agreed to meet and discuss way forward.

At the heart of the matter is that the National Women’s Football Association (NWFA), according to Goshen Trust deputy chief executive officer Willie Kalonga, only came to Goshen Trust last week saying that the tournament was due to kick-off and they were looking for funds to go towards the team’s uniforms.

However, says Kalonga, they are concerned that almost seven months since the contract was signed with FAM, they have not held discussions on the tournament.

As a context, FAM signed a K50 million three-year sponsorship contract with Goshen Trust on September 29 last year with K29 million going towards the Scorchers and K21 million being channeled towards the tournament. The K29 million for Scorchers was honoured.

But with the K21 million for the championship, Kalonga maintains that it does not make sense for NWFA, not FAM whom they signed the contract with, to just come up last week as if they are just waking up from the deep slumber.

NWFA president Addelaide Migogo, according to Kalonga, was hence told to go back and liaise with FAM leadership on the matter.

“If anything, maybe we’ll meet today [yesterday] because I spoke to their CEO [Alfred] Gunda yesterday [Thursday]. Otherwise, they have not communicated anything,” he said.

“As the situation stands, we are not aware that the tournament is starting on Monday. They haven’t shared anything at all. They cannot just come to say we are kicking off; we need to plan. We cannot be ambushed. It’s not an emergency. We are not dealing with an emergency.”

Migogo, however, declined to comment on the issue when contacted for comment yesterday. FAM CEO Alfred Gunda, in an interview, said they hope to reach an understanding by the end of the week, adding that they had tried to get in touch with Goshen Trust to start negotiations almost around Easter and they were told that they were preoccupied with Easter activities.

“But we got in touch with them and we are looking at meeting them before the end of the week.”

Reigning national champions Kukoma Ntopwa’s owner Isaac Jomo Osman said they are keeping the fingers crossed that the issues will be “sorted out the soonest”.

He said: “The tournament is already way behind schedule and we hope the concerned parties will reach an agreement soon so that the tournament is not affected.”

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