KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 9 — Badminton Association of Malaysia (BAM) council members have unanimously agreed to sell a piece of land owned by the association in Taman Maluri, Cheras here to the Taylor’s Education Group for RM52 million.
The decision was reached during BAM’s 75th Annual General Meeting (AGM) which took place at Akademi Badminton Malaysia (ABM) in Bukit Kiara here today.
Its president Tan Sri Mohamad Norza Zakaria said the council members agreed to sell the land following a thorough tender process which was chaired by Putrajaya Badminton Association deputy president Datuk Seri Mohd Shukri Abdull.
“Since we have moved to state-of-the-art facilities in ABM, the council members think we are not into running (a private) school which is not our core business as our focus is to develop more badminton players, besides building more academies in the country,” he told a press conference after chairing the AGM.
Commenting further, Mohamad Norza explained that they agreed to sell the land to Taylor’s Education Group which was determined to get the land under their name after renting for almost 20 years.
Initially, BAM operated from Taman Maluri in 1992 before moving to several places including Bukit Jalil, and finally moving to ABM in 2017.
Regarding the appointment status of Robert Gambardella from the United States as the ABM Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Mohamad Norza pointed out that BAM would make an announcement on the matter next week.
Previously, BAM had agreed to appoint the former chief of the Singapore Sports Institute (SSI) as the ABM CEO on a two-year contract, and the-62-year-old American was supposed to begin his duties on Aug 1 2020, pending immigration clearance.
“Due to (spike in cases of) COVID-19 in his country and his age, he had some difficulties to fly to Malaysia though we had several series of discussions (with him).
“Otherwise, we would have called other people to become the CEO of ABM as we want to be financially independent by 2022,” Mohamad Norza added.
