The league will have to report to the country’s FA for the duration of the lockdown in order to ensure safety of players and officials
Sports Minister Nathi Mthethwa has reportedly asked the South African Football Association (Safa) to enforce compliance from all PSL clubs in their return-to-training protocol.
According to Sport24, Mthethwa sent an official letter to Safa requesting them to “play an overarching role” across the board.
This will be reportedly been done through the 32 compliance officers which will be appointed by clubs as per the instruction from Joint Liaison Committee (JCL) which comprises of both Safa and PSL members.
The publication reports that the compliance officers through the PSL will be expected to submit their reports to Safa, who will then forward them to the government for quality control and monitoring.
Safa has also been instructed to furnish the Sports Ministry with its compliance monitoring plan on how they will be performing this duty and “other football-related activities during lockdown”, reports Sport24.
This comes on the back of the Sports Ministry’s call for Safa and the PSL to work together and speak in one voice after it emerged that the two organisations had differing views on the resumption and the completion of the season.
Safa president Dr Danny Jordaan reiterated Mthethwa’s sentiments on return-to-play protocols and called out Nelson Mandela Bay acting Mayor Tshonono Buyeye for urging president Cyril Ramaphosa to move the country from Level 3 of the lockdown back to Level 4.
“Minister Mthethwa was clear in his directive when he gave the go-ahead for teams to resume training and that was that there needs to be full compliance,” Jordaan said as quoted by Sport24.
“What was also agreed was only that there would be a return to training which is the first phase of the resumption of football.”
“You can’t have on the one hand a government official in Nelson Mandela Bay Acting Mayor Thsonono Buyeye calling for a return to a Level 4 lockdown and on the other calls for the return of competitive sport.
“We can’t have two differing opinions from the same government institution.”
Allegations have been made against the PSL that they want to police themselves without following the protocols they committed themselves to, including going public about confirmed positive results for transparency purposes.
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Only Kaizer Chiefs, Cape Town City, Bloemfontein Celtic, Orlando Pirates and Stellenbosch FC went public about their results, so did TS Galaxy and Swallows FC in the NFD.
The other teams opted not to go public about the results of their coronavirus tests, and this hasn’t sat well with Safa, reports the same publication.
The league is yet to announce a return date for competitive football but teams have already welcomed their players to the training grounds.
