Nyasa Manufacturing Company has officially lifted its sponsorship suspension on Big Bullets following a fruitful meeting with supporters executive committee on Wednesday in Blantyre where the supporters apologised to the sponsors.
On Monday, NMC suspended the sponsorship to the team until the internal wrangles at the club were resolved.
This development angered Bullets supporters committee which threatened to terminate the partnership with the sponsors if players were not paid their February salaries by 4 PM on Tuesday.
The demands forced NMC to call for an emergency meeting with the Stone Mwamadi led supporters committee where it was discovered that the sponsors had already released February salaries for the players.
After the meeting, the two sides agreed to move on from the wrangles for the betterment of the team.
The company’s Executive Director Dimitri Kalaitzis paid a special visit to the players at their training base where he promised to pay them on Thursday morning.
Kalaitzis then revealed the reasons behind NMC’s decision to suspend the sponsorship.
“To be clear, our sponsorship agreement states that sponsorship funds will be channelled from NMC to the People’s Team through the Club Trustees so the position we were forced to take was primarily based on the fact that the relevant authorities who receive our cheques, as per our agreement, were no longer in their respective positions,” he said.
He then announced that his company will continue sponsoring Bullets for a very long time.
“After a productive meeting with the Supporter’s Committee this morning, we agreed that there is an urgent need to establish the current status of the Nyasa Big Bullets Account so that where necessary we may come in to assist and ensure that the players receive their salaries by this Thursday the 9th of March 2017.
“There is also need to clarify the misunderstanding that NMC was withholding sponsorship funds for February. All funds for the month of February and the first week of March were released before the announcement of the suspension of the sponsorship,” said Kalaitzis.
And commenting on the development, Mwamadi thanked the sponsors for calming the storm and he was very quick to apologize to NMC for the actions taken by the committee on Tuesday.
During the meeting, interim executive committee which was appointed by the supporters committee was presented to Nyasa Manufacturing Company.
This is contrary to what the Board of Trustees said on Tuesday that it has reinstated all members of the interim executive committee who were in the committee prior to the AGM in Zomba last month.
According to Mwamadi, the only Board of Trustee member being recognized by the supporter’s committee is James Busile who was asked to come back.
