Zambia Sports Minister Emmanuel Mulenga has ordered that the technical bench of the national team should be paid early. The move is to encourage the Serbian and his assistants to ensure Chipolopolo pick up wins in order to get their qualification journey back on track.
Mulenga made these assurances to Milutin ‘Micho’ Sredojevic and his technical bench assistants during a performance report meeting in Lusaka. Football Association of Zambia (FAZ) general-secretary Adrian Kashala and FAZ technical director Lyson Zulu were part of the joint meeting. “I have actually instructed the Director of Sports John Zulu to make sure that you are paid in good time. For October you need to be paid before the end of next week,” Mulenga said as he was quoted by FAZ Facebook page.
“We don’t want to be in arrears as the government in paying coaches. We want to make sure that by 30th or just before 30th, all coaches are paid.”
The Minister also assured the members of the coaching team that the government and the citizens have complete faith in their abilities. “In doing that [early payments], we know that you are going to perform as expected by the Zambian people,” Mulenga added.
“As you are aware, we represent and speak on behalf of the Zambian people and the Zambian people do have trust in you.
“They do have trust in you even the time we delayed in signing your contract they [people] actually made a lot of noise that we need to sign this contract because we trust this coach.
“Since the Zambian people trust you, we as government trusts you and we know that you are going to perform.”
Chipolopolo will face the Zebras of Botswana twice in November as they search for a maiden win in Group H.
“The games we are going to have on 12 and 16 [November against Botswana] are do or die, there is no losing,” added the Minister.
“We have done our part as the government so it’s up to you and your boys to do your part and make our soccer fans proud because they want us as a country to return that glory we had.”
FAZ organised for friendly matches for Zambia where they tackled Malawi, Kenya, the 1996 African champions South Africa and Orlando Pirates.