Naph national chairperson Philip Rudanda said:

“A lot has come up in the period we were supposed to go for the regional Cossasa Games in Namibia and as a result we will no longer be going. There is the census which has sucked a lot of our manpower since a lot of our teachers are taken up by the census as compared to the Nash teachers so we are short of manpower to accompany our Under-13 athletes and that is the main reason we will not go.

“The other thing is that the names of the athletes who were selected for the national teams came late owing to the scheduling of our games which stretched over a longer period of time unlike in the first term where we wrapped our games within the opening two months and hence had more time to apply for travel documents and prepare on time”.

He said Naph had their annual national conference in September which would be attended by all the primary school headmasters and as such a clash of interests resulted in the sacrificing of the regional games as lack of manpower made attending the event impossible.

Rudanda dismissed reports that athletes were getting compromised because of Naph issues. There has been debate that Naph is an association of headmasters and primary schools sport should be on its own headed by a sports office and a marketing man.

The school of thought suggests headmasters should organise their own games just like teachers under Zimta have an annual competition.

Headmasters are known to pocket handsome allowances at the expense of teachers who spend hundreds of hours with children on the field who get paltry allowances of up to $50.

“We had the money to even fly our athletes to Namibia but there is no manpower. I do not think we are compromising our athletes as we always send them to a lot of international competitions. Recently they went to Romania for chess and this was not the first time,” Rudanda said.

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