KUALA LUMPUR: The Malaysian Handball Federation (MAHF) has been expelled as an affiliate member of the Olympic Council of Malaysia (OCM) due to its failure to settle an outstanding debt.

OCM secretary-general Datuk Mohd Nazifuddin Mohd Najib pointed out that the total debt, amounting to RM133,000, was supposed to be paid to the council as the participation cost of the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta-Palembang, Indonesia.

“We unanimously accepted that they are no longer part of the OCM.

“We have given them the avenue to discuss including to settle the instalment previously but they did not make any single payment or response to us,” he told a press conference after the 196th OCM Executive Council meeting today.

Mohd Nazifuddin stressed that the decision was based on OCM’s constitution and added that MAHF needs to settle the payment if they want to be back as an affiliate member of the council.

“We won’t see a handball team in the 2021 Sea Games in Hanoi, Vietnam, at the end of this year,” he added.

Meanwhile, Mohd Nazifuddin also announced that the Baseball Federation of Malaysia is also riddled with debts amounting to RM33,000, which was supposed to be paid for their 2013 Sea Games participation in Myanmar.

He said as per discussion with the federation, they seemed interested to settle the debt in order to re-join OCM.

Handball and baseball are among the sports which fall under category B of sports participation, in which they have to bear the entire expense before any multi-sports events and they will be compensated if they win a medal in the tournament.

Meanwhile, to prevent the same thing from happening again, OCM has decided that every category B sports participant must pay at least 50 per cent in advance should they want to take part in multi-sports events such as the SEA and Asian Games.

“The payment of another 50 per cent needs to be settled before the category B athletes leave to participate in the games, to avoiding incurring arrears,” he said. – Bernama