Local football referees are becoming notorious for poor match officiating resulting in their decisions influencing the outcome of football matches.
ZIFA Referees Committee boss Bryton Malandule revealed that the organisation will descend hard on errant behaviour of match officials. He said:
You know, when we are talking about referees the idea is not just to crack the whip, we need to groom these guys but we also punish them if we feel they have done something that has influenced the result.
This week we received a complaint from TelOne citing some calls from the referees and what I can tell you is that we act on all these complaints, we have punished our members on numerous occasions without necessarily telling the press.
This season alone we have demoted another referee to Division One after we saw that they are not fit for the Premier League.
Some referees have been suspended for three games each, for wrong decisions, like there is an incident in which a referee gave a goal and allowed it to stand after adjudging that it had crossed the line when it did not.
Malandule revealed that the association will this weekend attend that FC Platinum versus Dynamos match to be played at Mandava Stadium.
He added that clubs are free to approach the association if they feel that decisions have gone against them.