The financially crippled Namibia Football Association (NFA) is facing heated pressure and is at loggerheads with former and current technical staff members of the Brave Warriors, who are all claiming the NFA still owes them in excess of N$3.3 million but the local football federation on the other hand insists that it only owes the staff N$1.3 million.
A group of 11 claimants, which primarily consists of former and current national senior men’s team technical members, are all up in arms claiming the NFA owes them N$3.3 million in appearance and call-up fees stemming from various competitions, such as the 2017, 2018 Council of Southern Africa Football Associations (Cosafa) tournaments, the 2018 African Nations Championship (Chan), last year’s Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) and the Dr Hage Geingob Cup as well as for last year’s Afcon preparation friendly matches in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Speaking to Nampa, NFA’s acting secretary-general Franco Cosmos admitted that they are aware of the matter but said the NFA is currently not in a financial position to pay the claimants outstanding monies.
“We just finished off with an audit that the International Federation of Association Football (Fifa) wanted done before they can release any funds to us, and that final document was just handed over to Fifa, so we now waiting to hear what they (Fifa) will say,” he said.
The acting secretary-general claimed that only seven members of the technical team are owed money for the 2019 Afcon, as former head coach Ricardo Mannetti and his two assistants Ronnie Kanalelo and Colin Benjamin were all paid off.
“NFA was initially supposed to return N$1.7 million of the money they got from treasury when the senior national football team competed at the 2019 Afcon but when we soon get money from Fifa, we will only be returning N$400 000 of that amount to treasury because the N$1.3 million will be used to pay off the seven technical members still owed money,” said Cosmos.
The technical team members that are still owed money from the 2019 Afcon competition, according to Cosmos, are Cole Mundjenge (kit manager), Cyril Isaacs (team manager), Jakes Amaning (assistance team manager), Charle du Toit (biokinetic), Munashe Chinyama (physiotherapist) and Sebastian Shatuleni (team doctor).
Cosmos added that Timothy Tjongarero, who was part of the 2019 Afcon team as a video analyst, does not form part of the six technical members as his line ministry, the Ministry of Sport, Youth and National Service, is handling his matter.
But Kanalelo maintained that apart from the 2019 Afcon appearance and call up fees that were paid to the three coaches, they are still owed a lot of money dating back to various competitions.
“For Afcon, only players and the three coaches [Mannetti, Benjamin and myself] were paid in full what was owed to us for the Afcon call up and appearance fees, while the other technical team members just got half of their appearance fees and not a cent from their call up fees,” he said.
He added that all technical team members are still owed Afcon qualifying bonuses as well as outstanding bonuses for reaching the quarterfinals of the 2018 Chan competition and also for reaching the Plate Final of the 2018 Cosafa Cup in Rustenburg. –Nampa