TNM Plc is on the verge of cancelling its annual traditional awards for the elite football showpiece, the TNM Super League, as the company is broke.
In February, TNM admitted that it experienced delays to host the awards and told a local newspaper that the event would now take place in March, three months after the actual league games were concluded.
But well-placed sources at TNM Plc have corroborated that dinosaur Super league sponsor is teetering to cough a budget of about K151.7 million needed to host the traditional annual event.
The development has upset the local football fraternity and left SULOM which administers the sponsorship, pissed off.
Ironically, it comes months after TNM blew over MWK1 billion to buy top of-the- range Toyota Land Cruiser (2024 model) for its three under-performing senior executives, who include two expatriates. Each of the Toyota Land Cruisers costs over K350 million brand new.
The ‘heaven-on-earth’ vehicles were shared by CEO Michel Hebert, Chief Financial Officer Peter Kadzitche and Zambian wining Chief Commercial Officer, Amon Sobhuza Jere.
The cars are fitted with the advanced automobile manoeuvring technologies, including a 2.4 Cylinder i-Force Max Hybrid powertrain, all wheel drive, standard crawl technology and Multi-Terrain Select (MTS).
Ironically, employees of TNM often cry for replacement of their aged fleet of vehicles. But in response, the racist Canadian CEO Hebert often shrugs off their frequent requests, turning them into a routine footnote of pledges in his monthly verbose staff newsletters.
It is unclear when the TNM Super League awards, which include Media Awards, will be held. Also fuzzy is the future of TNM’s sponsorship of the league.
TNM asked its major shareholder Press Corporation Ltd Group for a bail-out loan of K4 billion to help sort its financial mess.
But the move now faces resistance from the board and minority shareholders who are concerned about company’s poor performance, and extravagance by the trio of Hebert, Kadzitche and the Impi from Chipata Jere
