National Sports

Chessam fails to fund players for Zambia tourney

 

Tupokiwe Msukwa and Desiderata Nkhoma will represent Malawi at the 2017 African Amateur Individual Chess Championship in Livingstone, Zambia.

The players are sponsoring themselves following Chess Association of Malawi’s failure to source funds for the event which will run from February 24 to March 4.

Msukwa has sourced own funding

Chessam general secretary Gershom Chima said the association has no money and the two would participate through self-sponsorship.

He said the K3 million subvention they receive from government through the Malawi National Council of Sports (MNCS), cannot cater for all international competitions.

“On that note, we advised our players to source sponsorship for their participation if they could manage and we thank God that the two will take part,” said Chima.

In December 2016, Yewo Sanga and Kezzie Msukwa Jnr also represented Malawi at the Africa Schools Chess Championship in Lusaka through self-sponsorship after Chessam also failed to raise K4 million for the junior players’ participation.

According to chess trainer, arbiter Isaac Mumba, the tournament is important because it assists upcoming chess players to improve their ratings.

Malawi national chess team has no Grand Master (GM) title from the rating of its top 10 chess players namely Joseph Nyambalo, Chiletso Chipanga, Joseph Mwale, Charles Chimthere, Richard Mbedza, Petros Mfune, Chuma Mwala, Gerald Mphungu, Paul Khuphwathea and Francis Banda.

MNCS executive secretary George Jana said it is pity that the association is failing to source additional funding to supplement government’s subvention.

“Of course, we cannot participate in all tournaments, but our expectation was that the association would generate funding for the players to travel to Zambia,” he said. n

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