HIGHLANDERS have admitted that they have been plunged into financial problems due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
BY FORTUNE MBELE
Bosso lost coach Mark Harrison who left the club to return home to Britain as the effects of the disease hit the club to the core.
The club, insists the coach will come back to continue in his role, but observers have suggested the financial implications of the coronavirus-induced delay to the start of the league were responsible for Harrison’s departure.
While admitting financial woes, Bosso have declined to shed light on the status of their sponsorship deal with NetOne.
“I don’t think at the moment there is any club or organisation that is financially happy because everyone is affected by COVID-19. As a club we don’t exist in a vacuum. We are equally affected by the pandemic. For the everyday running of the club, we don’t only depend on sponsorship. We depend on income from the clubhouse and gate-takings and there hasn’t been any activity due to the lockdown, so we are obviously affected and cannot be happy,” said club spokesperson Ronald Moyo on Tuesday.
By the end of last week, players from both Highlanders and Caps United had reportedly not received their salaries for April.
There has also been talk of pay cuts at giants Dynamos who are bankrolled by cigarettes manufacturer Rudland and George, a subsidiary of Gold Leaf Tobacco.
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Responding to questions from journalists on Tuesday on reports the NetOne deal was coming to an end, Moyo declined to elaborate.
“We don’t comment on those issues. Like you said those are media reports. We communicate with our sponsors and partners from a corporate perspective. In everything that we do, we don’t communicate through the media and at the moment we will not comment on that,” Moyo said.
He, however, said like every sector of business, Highlanders had not been spared the vagaries of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has suspended all sporting activities globally with uncertainty on when things will return to normalcy.
While Zifa have said that league football is likely to start in August or September, the government has not made any moves to allow sportspersons back to training.
