NPL staff not paid for three months

… Staff at home awaiting salaries

By Michael Uugwanga

NAMIBIA Premier League (NPL) employees have not been paid their April, May and June salaries due to financial constraints at the troubled institution.

The staffers have stayed away from work since they were given notice by the league’s secretariat in April to stay home while the financial situation is being attended to.

NPL is a non-profit organisation and heavily relies on stakeholders to run its day-to-day activities including salaries of its staff.  To make matters worse the NPL is currently suspended by its mother body, the Namibia Football Association (NFA) for allegedly bringing football into disrepute since October last year.

Chairperson of the NPL Patrick Kauta admitted that the NPL does not have money to pay salaries for its staff. He also revealed that his office will be meeting various people today as a way of sourcing money to pay a portion of the outstanding salaries.

“NPL has no money. The staff knows already why they have not been paid as it was communicated to them earlier.  Besides funds from stakeholders (sponsors), we also get funding through subscription fees from clubs amounting to around N$52 000 per annum from each club,” said Kauta.

The NFA will this weekend hold its 16th extraordinary congress with the submission on the NPL expulsion being one of the agenda points to be discussed, despite the NPL and NFA still having a pending suspension case at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Switzerland.

The suspension of the NPL follows its refusal to promote Orlando Pirates and Civics to the Premier League, after the Normalisation Committee of the NFA gave a directive to retain the two clubs after the 2018/2019 soccer season. The NPL however, maintains that it did not have the power to do so after none of its 13 members submitted a proposal to amend its constitution to allow the two clubs back.

The NFA Manual on Rules and Regulations states that ‘the Premier League will consist of 16 or any other number of clubs as decided by the NFA Executive’.

Asked about his thoughts on the upcoming NFA congress of which the NPL saga will be very much on the agenda, Kauta was not interested to dwell on the matter.

“We do not wait for the NFA for us to do our things,” he said.