No permanent coach for queens

 

Netball Association of Malawi (NAM) has said the Queens’ next coach will still be engaged on part-time basis due to financial challenges.

NAM president Rosy Chinunda said the development follows government’s  trimming of their proposed budget for the current financial year from about K300 million to K32 million.

“In the proposed budget that was submitted to government, the employment of a permanent coach was factored in, but we can no longer proceed with the plans as the money which was allocated to us [K32 million] cannot sustain such plans.

“It means we will maintain the previous arrangement to hire coaches on part-time basis, we cannot employ a permanent coach until the economy improves,” she said.

The NAM president said the current arrangement affects the coach in terms of planning as the coach is restricted to short-term plans instead of coming up with long-term plans.

Chinunda said NAM will soon decide on the way forward on who to hire as caretaker coach and her assistant.

“Our plans are that the team should start training mid-September in preparation for the Fast5 World Netball Series scheduled for October.

“The team has been dominant for a while, so we need to get things started as we do not have much time,” she said.

However, Malawi National Council of Sports (MNCS) executive secretary George Jana insisted that even if the annual subvention was enough, NAM would have still been required to  justify the hiring of a permanent coach.

He said: “We advised them to present to us their strategic plan that will detail duties of the coach before the person can be employed, but they still haven’t done so.

“There is need to have a documented and outlined scope of work  for the coach throughout the period of the contract because we want to avoid hiring someone who will spend nine months just sitting at home and only be available for event-based assignments.

“The idea is to create a little work to keep that particular person busy, it could be conducting coaching seminars and clinics among others.”

The Queens are without a coach as the one-year contracts of Peace Chawinga-Kalua and her assistant Mary Waya expired in May this year. n