CAF wants inactive officials dumped

Oct 18, 2009

WORLD soccer governing body FIFA and continental body CAF have vowed to weed out inactive referees’ instructors in the Eastern Africa because they set back the region.

By Swalley Kenyi

WORLD soccer governing body FIFA and continental body CAF have vowed to weed out inactive referees’ instructors in the Eastern Africa because they set back the region.

Eastern Africa which has produced some of the leading referees and instructors at global and continental levels has over 300 officials, whose bulk have remained inactive since their graduation.

FIFA instructor Carlos Henriques and his CAF counterpart Besta Kalombo sounded the warning to deregister such officials, while passing out 22 FUTURO III referees instructors from Tanzania, Malawi, Rwanda, Djibouti, Somalia, Eritrea and hosts Uganda. They attended a week-long course that ended in Kampala last Saturday.

The course was facilitated by Enriques, Kalombo, Bart Gilis, Mark Mzengo (Ivory Coast), Zambian Felix Tangawarima and Joseph Wellington (Ghana).

It was organised for instructors from neighbouring countries at a centralised venue. FIFA demands that the instructors participating in the programme are active at the end of each course.

“You either work with us or you will remain behind. Our panel (of instructors) is aging out. They (FIFA) are looking for replacements,” Kalombo, who is directly in charge of CAF referees and instructors’ appointments in Cairo, Egypt, told the graduates.

Kalombo said that laxity of the FIFA and CAF referees’ instructors is likely to cause degeneration of football officiating.

He said while FIFA and CAF have pooled resources to ensure quality refereeing in the region and Africa at large, many of the beneficiaries fail to extend their knowledge to others.

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