Government tells off Fufa over coach’s payments

Gone. The Serbian tactician before he quit

What you need to know:

Sports Commissioner said government was ready to assist the federation in paying the national team coach’s wages but got frustrated. The coach’s salary issue is confidential, the soccer governing body apparently told government.

Government has hit back at Fufa after the local soccer governing body claimed before the Parliament Committee on Education and Sports on Thursday that government has neglected all football activities in the country.

Appearing a day after Fufa president Moses Magogo made the claim, the Sports Commissioner Omara Apita told the same committee that the government was hesitant to deal with the federation after advice from the Solicitor General.

Apita quoted the Solicitor General’s letter dated May 27th, 2013 to the Education Ministry Permanent Secretary stating that, “Fufa, the national association, is supposed to be established under the regulations made by the Minister of Education and Sports and that even without the regulations Fufa in its current state as Fufa Limited, is still illegal.

He also cited section 18 of the Companies Act, Cap 110 that prohibits registration of organisations with similar names or those similar to well-known national bodies that are likely to cause confusion to the public. While appearing before the committee on Wednesday, Magogo told the legislators that there exists Fufa and Fufa Limited with the latter the legal arm of the federation.

Magogo also appeared to contradict himself in his submission to the legislators when he said that the federation was only accountable to their general assembly. “The general assembly is the supreme body of Fufa,” he said.
Later in his submission, however, he told the committee that Uganda is the only country where the federation is left with the responsibility of paying the national team’s coach.

“How then do you deal with an illegal entity,” Apita wondered. Apita told the committee that the federation had frustrated the ministry’s efforts to facilitate the current Cranes coach Micho Sredojevic’s salary. “Honorable Alupo asked me to find out, how much Micho would be earning as Cranes coach immediately after he was unveiled but they (Fufa) explicitly told me his salary was a confidential matter between the coach and the federation,” Apita told the amused legislators.

In October last year, the federation admitted Micho had gone two months without pay five months after the Serbian had taken charge of the national team on a two year contract.