Presidential Paralympics championship postponed
The Presidential Initiative on Sports (PIS) Paralympics Championship, scheduled to take place at Kamuzu Institute for Sports in Lilongwe, has been postponed due to lack of funds, Malawi Paralympics Committee (MPC) has announced.
MPC president Juma Mkandawire said yesterday that Sports Council has not yet released allocation for the event and they would not be able to cater for the athletes’ transport to the venue, accommodation and food.
“We have done this on technical grounds as we have not received our funds for the contest. We could not proceed because we did not want to miss the plot,” said Mkandawire.
He said they would like to use the event to prepare for the 2014 Zone V1 Games in Zimbabwe.
However, one of the MPC officials, who asked for anonymity, said Sports Council has withheld MPC’s funding for the contest as a part of refund to International Paralympics Committee’s K2.3 million (US$6, 211) grant which MPC received last year for the aborted trip of local athletes to the 2012 London Games.
MPC is still serving an IPC suspension, which includes no participation in IPC-sanctioned events and also not acquiring funds from the international body until the grant is repaid.
According to the MPC official, they also did not receive funding for last year’s PIS championships due to the same issue.
Early this year, council said it would give IPC its annual subvention to top up on the refund.
But, according to Mkandawire, while council says it holds back the PIS funds to reimburse the IPC grant, IPC still writes them reminders that to date no single penny has yet been refunded.
“The PIS financial crisis is coming at a time when we cannot even afford to pay our K30 000 affiliation fee to IPC so that we can still be considered as a member in principle,” said Mkandawire.
Council executive secretary George Jana refused to shed more light on the reasons they have not released PIS funds to the MPC save for saying there are issues they need to sort out with MPC.
