The Football Association of Malawi (FAM) First Vice President Madalitso Kuyera has described the stewards Trainer of Trainers workshop currently underway in Lilongwe as a perfect way to end violence during matches.
Kuyera was speaking today at the opening of a two-day steward trainer of trainers workshop at Bingu National Stadium which is aimed at creating a pool of local trainers who are expected to be conducting stewardship trainings across the country.
“This is a very important training, as you recall last season, we had so many issues of violence so want to make sure that such incidences are minimized by training different stakeholders in football like stewards” said Kuyera
At least 42 participants are in attendance, that includes the stewards supervisors from all the stadiums that host elite football and the 16 Super League clubs security officers.
However, the workshop is being facilitated by the FIFA and CAF Safety Security expert Dixon Okello from Uganda.
Okello said “We are here to train stewards, you know security is now big issue in African football we’ve been witnessing an increase in violence all over, we don’t want to see this in stadium and we are here to work with the federation to see how we can end such issues
This is a very important engagement and am sure by the end of the training we will have top quality steward trainers who will be able to train more people in their respective clubs. Malawi has been doing fine in administration but issues of security is a bit lack like any other African country and am happy that they are taking it seriously now”
Okello is a Certified FIFA and CAF Security and Safety officer, who has a proven track record of safeguarding football players, Officials, Sports fans at major sports events.
He was recently voted CAF best Safety and Security officer and is Federation of Uganda football Association security officer.
He was a steward at the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South and has been Safety and Security Officer at CAF tournaments like the AFCON 2022 Cameroon, CAF Confederation Cup final Nigeria 2022, AFCON U-20 Niger 2019 and AFCON 2019 Egypt.
He has also served as Security and Safety Officer at FIFA tournaments like the FIFA U-20 Poland 2029, FIFA U-20 Argentina 2023 and FIFA Arab Cup Qatar 2021.