Football, Sarawak News - Wednesday, May 14, 2008 10:00 - 0 Comments

Khaider spills beans

FAS’ financial problems main reason behind quit decision

KUCHING: Khaider Zaidell, who quit as Football Association of Sarawak (FAS) president, has described FAS as being in deep financial trouble and “a sunken ship that is still deeply rooted at the bottom of the sea.”

Breaking his silence after submitting his resignation letter to FAS last Friday, the 61-year-old lawyer said the endless financial problems faced by FAS were the main reason he quit after serving in the hot seat for nine months and revealed that the problem had nearly forced Sarawak to skip from participating in the 2007-08 Super League.

“It is therefore with utter sadness that I have to leave FAS as quickly as I took the helm but not abandoning it entirely as somehow I still feel obliged to save FAS even not as president,” he said in a statement faxed to Bernama here yesterday.

Khaider said since he took over as FAS president in August last year, the association had owed Sarawak Stadium Corporation and Employees Provident Fund (EPF) a substantial amount of money as well as a few months’ pay to the team management including players and staff.

“Since January 2008 however, I have been confronted with judgement orders and court summonses for past debts which could and should have been paid during the good times financially,” he said.

He said FAS managed to reduce the amount of salaries owed to the players but that was still not enough even though Football Association of Malaysia (FAM), the national governing body, had given a grant to FAS.

“FAS used to own a few shophouses, some parcels of useful land for development and shares in timber companies all courtesy of the State government. It is amazing how debts remained incurred with so much assets,” he said.

While it was not difficult to understand why the State government decided to cut the financial assistance to FAS, he said maybe it was timely to look back into the financial statements of FAS in the past.

He also said Sarawak nearly wanted to pull out from 2007-08 Super League but it was cancelled when the then FAS treasurer, now the team manager Zuraimi Sabki, promised to tackle the financial problem.

“I really salute him but feel bad because his efforts were not translated into making Sarawak the team to beat. Perhaps here is the man (Zuraimi) who can turn the fortunes for Sarawak,” he added.

— Bernama