Kamuzu Stadium stinks, toilets are in bad state

Some fans at Kamuzu Stadium had a degrading experience on Saturday as they endured using stinking toilets devoid of running water and with piles of faeces and maggots behind the covered stands.

The sorry sight of the toilets put the fans’ lives at risk during the Flames’ game against Benin in the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers, said health experts.

These particular toilets had no running water and there was no sign that it was cleaned ahead of the match and some fans, including former Football Association of Malawi (FAM) chief executive officer Charles Nyirenda, were overhead complaining about the pitiful state.

An annoyed Nyirenda said, in his capacity as a health activist, it was a shame that the country cannot maintain sanitation standards in public places.

The stadium housed over 20 000 fans for the game and it is unclear how the match commissioner was unable to spot the mess.

“I was very annoyed, when I went in there, I literally didn’t know where to step on. It is a pity that we are unable to maintain basic standards of sanitation, yet people paid. If we want to move forward and even before talking about World Cup qualification, we have to pay attention to small things. Public health is critical,” Nyirenda explained.

However, other toilets such as those at the VIP were clean. Stadium manager Charles Mhango yesterday referred questions to the stadium owners, the Ministry of Youth and Sports whose sports director Jameson Ndalama and principal secretary Justin Saidi, could not be reached.

But last week, commenting on general stadium issues, Saidi admitted that once the stadium revenue goes into government’s Account Number One, it does not follow that a similar amount will be allocated back to the stadium as the money is used across all needs.

But it has transpired that the stadium has not been funded adequately in the last two months and that gate collections of 25 percent cut from the net goes straight to Account Number One.

Mhango admitted that they had huge bills, but that government has since released funding. FAM met some expenses to help clean the toilets, which Suzgo Nyirenda admitted yesterday, were before the game in a sorry state.

“We have some K23 000 (US$56) for disinfectants as the toilets were not in good shape. They get their cut and we would not recover that money, but we had to step in as at the end of the day, we are organisers and if there is embarrassment, it goes to us,” Suzgo Nyirenda explained.