By MOSES CHIMFWEMBE –
THE Handball Association of Zambia (HAZ) is scouting for K315,000 to successfully stage the 2015 All Africa Games (AAG) qualifiers in March.
Zambia was awarded the rights to host AAG handball qualifiers by the Confederation of African Handball (CAHB) slated for March from 8 to 14 following the successful hosting of the 2014 International Handball Federation (IHF) Zone Six challenge.
The qualifiers will see Zambia compete for two qualifying slots against South Africa, Zimbabwe, Angola, Mozambique, Malawi, Lesotho and Swaziland in the men and women categories respectively.
HAZ communications manager Josab Changa yesterday made a passionate appeal to the corporate world to assist the association in raising the set budget for hosting the qualifiers.
“We were greatly honoured to have been given yet another opportunity to host a handball event and this time around we will be staging the qualifiers for the All Africa Games that will take place in Congo Brazzaville.
We are appealing for support from the well wishers looking at the time that we are remaining with in which to prepare for qualifiers,” Changa said.
He said he was confident the corporate world will respond positively to HAZ’s request in time for the games.
Changa said while participating teams would bear their costs during the qualifiers, HAZ needed to mobilize adequate funds to cater for the other logistics and clearance of all the participants.
He said the HAZ was pondering to push in a request to CAHB to reschedule the qualifiers to April in order for the association to have more time to prepare for event.
“As you know, we only have a month to prepare to prepare for this competition and I think it will only be fair that we ask for a month extension from the continental federation for us to prepare and we hope the request will be granted,” he said.