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During a good month, PSL match official Molefe Ntuli* used to pocket up to R30 000 in earnings, depending on the number of matches he officiated.
But since the indefinite postponement of PSL matches due to the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic and subsequent lockdown, he only receives about R3 750 as a monthly stipend from the league due to his active membership on the national panel of referees.
PSL referees earn R6 100 per game, while their assistants get R4 700 and match commissioners get R4 000.
Ntuli has found it hard to stay at home while football matches remain on hold.
“For us, it’s no work, no pay,” he says.
The father of two and his fellow officials haven’t heard from Safa about their eligibility to benefit from the relief fund of R150 million for those in the sporting and cultural sectors, which was announced on Friday by Sports Minister Nathi Mthethwa.
“We don’t know if Safa’s applied for us or not. Hopefully, we’ll get answers soon,” says Ntuli.
Almost 70% of match officials are currently unemployed.
“There are the lucky ones who are teachers or in the police force, but most of us rely solely on refereeing for an income. It’s bad. When the league stopped last month, we’d done only one round of league matches and four games of the Nedbank Cup. That meant only a few of us would receive anything at the end of this month.
“With no games at all during the whole of April, it’s going to be even worse, as we’ll get only our stipends at the end of May,” he says.
He added that officials on the international panel were also hit hard because they had no opportunity to boost their earnings.
“CAF cancelled the Afcon qualifiers at the end of March and some of our guys were going to officiate for at least two matches, but now they’ve lost out.”
CAF officials are paid $1 125 (R21 000) per assignment.
The relief fund was set up to assist all athletes and arts practitioners, based on a set of criteria defined for each sector.
In a statement, the department of arts and culture said it had appointed six independent panellists to assess the more than 300 applications and were expecting them to report back to it.
Outgoing acting Safa chief executive Gay Mokoena said the association had applied to the relief fund for players and match officials who had lost their income.
However, he added that this had not been done very efficiently as they were given little time to prepare and submit the applications.
“I must be honest, while we did submit some of them, we could have done more, especially for referees. We got the forms on a Friday and had to return them on the Monday. Some of the forms weren’t signed or adequately completed as they needed to be accompanied by a bank confirmation letter and tax numbers,” said Mokoena.
“Most of the people we applied for were members of the national teams, as they get paid per call-up and with national team matches – including those scheduled to be played by Banyana Banyana, the women’s Under-20 team, Bafana Bafana and the national Under-23 team – it meant they weren’t going to get paid.”
Mokoena said Safa would approach the Unemployment Insurance Fund to help the match officials.
*For fear of victimisation, this is not his real name
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