The immediate former Harambee Stars Coach Engin Firat has issued a 14 day ultimatum to Football Kenya Federation (FKF) to settle his salary arrears amounting to Ksh 75 million.
Firat, who resigned from his national team duty after Kenya failed to qualify for the 2025 AFCON reportedly slapped FKF with the hefty pending bill in a notice sent to new FKF president Hussein Mohammed threatening that he would move to FIFA over the matter if the salary arrears is not settled in the next 14 days.
Sports Monthly can report that the Turkish tactician, who tendered his resignation from Harambee Stars on Tuesday, cited accrued salary arrears as his reason for resignation, coupled with remarks by the Kenyan Sports Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen who remarked that the government would be seeking ways of terminating his contract with the national team.
“Firat’s demands the payment of his salary accrued to Ksh 75 million in full in the next 14 days failure to which, he has threatened to move to FIFA to sue FKF after the 14 days elapse,” a close source intimated to this reporter in an interview.
Firat failed to qualify Harambee Stars to the 35th edition of Confederation of African Football (CAF) tournament set to be held in Morocco in 2015 opting to call it quits.
In his remarks, Murkomen said that since the government funds Harambee stars and the coach and as a result of failing to qualify, it is rather obvious that of course the Ministry will implement that section of the law and we will not remit any other funds beyond the period that was agreed to the coach.
FKF President Mohammed in Wednesday in his first session with the Media issued a statement confirming the exit of Firat saying the former Moldova tactician had tendered his resignation with grounds of pending arrears.
“I want to confirm that Firat’s termination reached me yesterday (Tuesday) in the evening, I was not privy to it and definitely we will do an internal audit first on the claims of arrears (owed to him) and once the report comes out, we will deal with the matter but the grounds of termination is the pending arrears,” said Mohammed.
Kenya, who were chasing a seventh appearance at the Morocco tournament, failed to seal a ticket after finishing third in Group J which consisted of winners Cameroon, second-placed Zimbabwe and Namibia, who finished last.
Kenya started their campaign with a 0-0 draw against Zimbabwe, recovered to beat the Brave Warriors of Namibia 2-1 before two back-to-back defeats against the Indomitable Lions shattered their hopes. Cameroon won the first meeting before winning the second 1-0 in Uganda.
Kenya finished off their campaign with a 1-1 draw against the Warriors of Zimbabwe before concluding their group matches with a 0-0 draw against Namibia.
The problem of Kenya not paying coaches is not new. In May 2016, FKF found themselves sweating over a Sh 245 million legal suit from two of its former coaches – Bobby Williamson and Adel Amrouche.
Williamson, who handled Harambee Stars for 16 months, was seeking compensation of Ksh 105million for unlawful dismissal while Belgian Amrouche was demanding Ksh 130 million as compensation, an amount equivalent to the remainder of his five-year contract which was to run until 2019 but he was fired in August 2014.
In 2020, Frenchman Sebastien Migne threatened to report FKF to FIFA over unpaid dues. Migne, who led Kenya to the 2019 AFCON in Egypt after a 15-year wait where they failed to go past the group stage, was fired following Harambee Stars’ elimination from the 2020 African Nations Championship (CHAN).
