Brothers players request BCB to settle DPL payment issue

Brothers Union players met BCB chief executive Nizamuddin Chowdhury on Tuesday to inform the board they were not yet paid their dues for playing in the 2016 Dhaka Premier League.

Brothers Union are the second club after Victoria Sporting Club to meet the CEO for not being paid in time. The Victoria players still remain unpaid despite their complaint on June 23. Six days later, the BCB paid the players from Kalabagan Cricket Academy and Cricket Coaching School a partial amount after the teams received little from their respective clubs.

The DPL players were supposed to be paid 30% of the full amount before the tournament started on April 22, the next 30% by the end of the first phase and the last 40% by August 3, six weeks following the end of the Super League. However, according to the Brothers Union players, most of them weren't paid after the first instalment. Nafees Iqbal, Shahriar Nafees, Nabil Samad were among the players who met Chowdhury.

"Most of the players have been paid 30%," Nafees said. "While we should have received our full amount by now, we haven't even been paid our second instalment till now. We have informed the BCB's chief executive about this. The board have been strict in this matter, and have paid two clubs before Eid.

"The Premier League is the source of income for most of the professional players in the country. So if we are not paid properly, it would make our livelihood difficult."

Chowdhury said the board will tackle the discrepancy this week, and would strive to settle the issue "amicably".

"Players from Brothers Union club met me today. We contacted the club recently. We had given the players an assurance when they came under the players-by-choice process of transfer. We are trying to amicably settle the situation with the club, which means that we want them to pay the players. We are hoping this will be settled soon otherwise the board will take its own action.

"We told the players that we will speak to the club this week. If we don't get anything satisfactory out of it, we will take the action as per the BCB president's earlier statement," he said.

Nafees said the Brothers Union officials haven't lived up to their assurance of clearing some payment before Eid last month. "We haven't really heard from them at this moment. They had told us that we will get some payment before Eid but that was a long time ago. We haven't had any discussions with the club since then," he said.

Nafees, though, said the clubs were limited by irregular earnings and having to rely on donations.

"The clubs said that they wanted player-by-choice to reduce the high player payment in the DPL, because it was becoming hard for them to pay players. We have usually sacrificed 10-15 per cent of our payment almost every year. We know that clubs don't have a permanent source of income, and they have made a lot of sacrifices for the players. They run on donations.

"But if they still can't pay the players after going by the new system, it becomes very hard for the players. We became hopeful after the board president said that they will take responsibility if the clubs are lazy in payment, and this is why we came to the board," Nafees said.