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Sports Reporter
ZIMBABWE Handball Federation president Amon Madzvamuse has urged provinces to pay their affiliation fees if they are to participate in Saturday’s meeting where elections for a new national executive will be staged.

The elections are scheduled for Marondera on Saturday with all the provinces expected to be represented.

However, it appears there may be challenges after Madzvamuse revealed yesterday that all the provinces have not paid their affiliation fees pegged at $500.

The elections were originally scheduled for March 31 when the term of office for the current executive led by Madzvamuse came to an end.

But they were cancelled on the same day as there were some outstanding issues that needed to be dealt with including the failure by some of the provinces to turn up in Kariba.

It was then decided to move the elections to May 30 and Simbiso Mpepereki was elected the new president when he got eight votes against Madzvamuse’s one vote.

Mpepereki was deputised by Alphios Magiya.

However, Madzvamuse declared that the extraordinary meeting, which ousted him, was unconstitutional and fought to have the elections declared null and void before bouncing back as the president of the local handball mother body.

But last month the Sports Commission gave a directive to the ZHF to hold their elections before the end of this month.

Madzvamuse yesterday said all the 10 provinces have not yet paid their affiliation fees of $500 and this might once again scupper Saturday’s elections.

“I am urging them to pay the affiliation fees because yesterday (Tuesday) we had a meeting with the treasurer of the Zimbabwe Handball Federation and looking at our bank statement, the statistics show that out of the 10 provinces, none has affiliated.

So as the president, I am urging them to quickly deposit their money for Saturday’s progress. Failure to do that, I think it will jeopardise the Sports Commission’s directive for us to have these elections,” said Madzvamuse.

The ZHF president said only those that would have paid their affiliation fees will cast their votes on Saturday and this may cause some problems again with the elections having been postponed in March.

Madzvamuse said this is the first time the provinces will be paying affiliation fees to the national federations since they adopted their constitution in 2013.

“This is gives them the right to cast their vote. All along they were not affiliating because we did not have a constitution. It’s the first of its kind.

In 2014 it was still an interim committee, there were no elections. But now that there is this election, we have to follow our constitution, we have to do exactly that.

“I am just urging the electorate as president and the Sports Commission encourages me to do that,” said Madzvamuse.

But with payment of affiliation fees a key constitutional requirement, the Sports Commission’s bid to have elections held by this weekend could hit a snag.