FRANCIS CHIPALO writes
@SunZambian
IT IS a challenge for National Sports Council of Zambia (NSCZ) to come on board and aid sports federations in the country, says acting General Secretary Raphael Mulenga.
Mulenga said it would be nice to help because currently sports
bodies did not avail NSCZ their game plans for
assistance.
“Most of them do not avail us their plans, an indication that they do not plan their activities at all,” said Mulenga
Speaking in an interview with the Sun Sports yesterday, Mulenga said the sports mother body was ready to support sports federations.
“The plans are supposed to come from national federations, and you may wish to know that immediately we started this year, we asked sports federations to share their plans with us so that we can as well see how we can support them but most of these sports federations don’t plan,’’ Mulenga said.
Mulenga said that the only thing that the council got from federations was short notices about their activities. “Some of these federations rarely plan apart from a few. And all we get from a number of them are short notices requesting for assistance in this and that and that becomes a challenge for us to help them,’’ he said.
Mulenga urged sports federations to avail the council their plans which should clearly indicate schedules of their activities.
Meanwhile, Mulenga said the media was partially to blame for lack of growth for other sports.
He wondered why the local media was giving too much coverage to soccer at the expense of other sporting disciplines.
“Why is it that there is too much soccer coverage in Zambia as if it was the only sport,
“All what the media has been showing is football and when people think about sports, they think football and in 2018 when we didn’t do well in football people thought we had done thing.
“We couldn’t qualify to Africa Cup of Nations, the Under 17 COSAFA in Botswana couldn’t go anywhere and yet other sports disciplines won medals at a world, continental and regional levels but there was not enough publicity,” complained Mulenga.
He said the council was however looking at every window of publicity in an effort to expose various sports disciplines, adding that the more reason NSCZ introduced awards so that the media would also be awarded.
He said there was a need to sell the products of other sports disciplines if they were to grow and attract the corporate world for sponsorship.
“There is need to expand sports which are deemed as ‘minor’ by ensuring that a lot of people are participating in them,
“And we also need to sell the products of these others sports so that they are seen by a lot of people, including the corporate world because they are the major sponsors,’’ Mulenga said.
