Front PageNational Sports

Meck feels  short-changed

Former Flames coach Meck Mwase’s lawyers have accused Football Association of Malawi (FAM) of underhand dealings in the case in which the Industrial Relations Court (IRC) ordered them to pay their client K440 million compensation for unlawful termination of contract, redeployment and constructive dismissal.

Former IRC deputy chairperson Edna Bodole, now High Court of Malawi judge, last year ordered FAM to pay Mwase the compensation.

Yet to be compensated: Mwase | Courtesy of David Kanyenda

However, FAM obtained a stay  order following an ex-parte application and subsequently filed an  inter-partes motion for stay consistent of the said ex-parte order.

The court allocated January 16 2025 as the date of the hearing and Mwase’s lawyer David Kanyenda of Makiyi, Kanyenda and Associates claims that on January 9, court clerk Dan Kanyamula informed both FAM and Mwase’s lawyers on the date of the hearing.

However, FAM’s lawyer Luciano Mickeus apparently did not collect the notices.

In an affidavit in support of striking off the motion for stay execution and to discharge the  execution stay, Kanyenda argues that FAM has deliberately avoided to collect court notices.

Reads his submission: “Mr Kanyamula informed me that counsel Luciano Mickeus declined to collect and service the inter-partes notices of motion because the date was inconvenient to him. Yet on the same date of 16 January 2025, counsel Mickeus was within the precincts of the IRC attending to other matters.

“I enquired from another court clerk Mr Fred Zakariya as to what type of court business counsel Mickeus was attending to and he informed me that counsel  Mickeus appeared before the deputy chairperson His Honour Nkhata in IRC matter.

“Clearly, counsel Mickeus elected to refuse to appear before the senior judicial officer in preference to the appearance before the deputy chairperson. This smacks of unprofessionalism and lack of courtesy.”

Kanyenda further says FAM’s move is calculated to unfairly sustain and prolong the stay order without affording them an opportunity to be heard.

He said: “The respondent’s hands are filthy and dripping with dirt through the usage of underhand tactics to perpetuate the locking up of the applicant’s fruits of litigation.

“This honourable court and indeed all courts should neither be party to nor continence to shenanigans attempted by the respondent for these blot of Judiciary and dent the image of the legal profession in the eyes of right thinking of members of the public.”

The IRC has since summoned FAM in Blantyre today for failing to appear in the court on January 16 and to explain why the motion to stay execution of the court’s judgement should not be struck off, according to court documents.

The documents read: “Upon direction from the chairperson and on the court’s own motion, respondents herein, the said Football Association of Malawi are hereby summoned to appear at the Industrial Relations Court Principle Registry sitting at Blantyre before the chairperson on the 23rd day of January 2025 to show cause why the motion to stay execution of the court’s order on assessment of compensation following a judgement delivered by Her Honour Deputy Bodole [as she was then] on November 28 2024, should not be struck off the cause list for failure to appear without justifiable cause and the order staying of the said order of compensation be discharged.”

Mickeus was not available for comment yesterday, but FAM general secretary Alfred Gunda in an interview said they are aware of the court’s summons and that he was handling the matter.

FAM fired Mwase with a year left on his contract in April 2022 at its executive committee meeting in Mangochi, where they replaced him with Romanian Mario Marinica, who was initially the technical director.

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Back to top button