Leemisa Thuseho
LESOTHO will miss the upcoming Africa Netball World cup qualifiers, the Lesotho Times can reveal.
The qualifiers for African countries will be held in Pretoria from 21 to 27 August 2022.
The Netball World Cup will be held from 28 July to 6 August 2023 at the International Convention Centre in Cape Town.
But Netball Africa this week announced a list of the participating countries and Lesotho is not on the list.
The competing countries will include the hosts South Africa, Uganda, Namibia, Botswana, Tanzania, eSwatini, Malawi, Kenya, Zimbabwe and Zambia.
Lesotho Netball Association (LNA) secretary general, Lineo Palime, confirmed that Lesotho did not register for the events because it has been suspended from World Netball.
Apart from the suspension, the country didn’t pay the qualifiers participation fees amounting to M13 000.
“We didn’t register because we have two major problems namely that we still owe World Netball and that we have not paid the qualifiers’ participation fee,” Palime said.
The World Netball subscription of £650 (about M13 082) was supposed to have been paid in January and Lesotho failed to pay. However, World Netball postponed the deadline to March, but Lesotho still failed to meet the deadline.
Normally, the Lesotho Sport and Recreation Commission (LSRC) helps the federations in paying for compliance fees locally and internationally.
However, the LNA only submitted the requisitions to the LSRC last month.
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Palime said the LSRC has since said it would not help the LNA with paying World Cup qualifiers fees.
“We have submitted our requisition, but the World Netball subscription have not yet been paid. We were also told that the World Cup qualifiers participation fees would not be paid by the LSRC.”
A fortnight ago, Palime told this publication that they delay in paying and asking for help from LSRC by her office was because of her failure to settle into the new office in time. She also said she did not get any orientation.
“Since I was new in the office, I didn’t get any orientation or assistance on how to go about the job. I was forced to learn by myself along, and that made life difficult,” Palime said at the time.
