Highlanders’ debt has ballooned close to $1 million with the club’s board chairman Mgcini Nkolomi saying the recently held mid-year meeting failed to come up with concrete survival methods.

Mgcini said the mid-year gathering should have come up with decisions to save the 90-year-old club.

“Our EGM (extraordinary general meeting) was poorly attended and yet it was meant to define the future of Highlanders FC. The decisions which were supposed to be taken there were either we survive or we die, we live or we perish, but the debate was kind of shallow; it wasn’t engaging,” said Nkolomi at the club’s press conference last Friday.

Highlanders have called for an emergency meeting with life members to appraise them of the precarious and life threatening position the club finds itself in.

Nkolomi said some decisions previously thought to be taboo at Highlanders would have to be taken to bail out the club.

At the mid-year meeting, members endorsed a new business model as part of the Fifa club licensing programme that saw membership fees being slashed to $5 in a move aimed at increasing membership.

“We are approaching probably a $1 million mark in terms of our debt; how many of those people will pay the $5? But you have to understand that it is the will of the people; we will engage them, we will not go ahead of their interest (but) we know exactly that this club can wind up anytime if people don’t become serious about this whole thing,” said Nkolomi.

He said it was the view of the board that some of the survival strategies endorsed at the mid-year meeting were for the future, but Highlanders needs to be saved now as it is in dire straits.

“Some of those issues contained in that document could be issues of the future in terms of impact, but here we are responding to now and now issues and that is the club is in dire straits, it’s in serious need of financial intervention,” said Nkolomi.

Also present at the press conference was the finance committee chairman Davies Sibanda, who said the life of the club was weighed down by debt adding that its survival was due to the magnanimity of its creditors, whom he said had been very kind.

“We have got a plan of turning the club around, but the reality is that things are happening much faster than the plan that we put in terms of the downward slide of the club financially. We have been unable to generate enough money from the gate takings just to cover the players and coaches’ bonuses,” said Sibanda.

“We have decided to have an informal meeting with our life members. We are simply saying to them it can no longer be business as usual; yes they gave us authority in our mid-year meeting to raise funds in one way or another, but that method needs time and as a finance committee, we don’t believe that is the only method which can help us because of where the club  is now.

“We will not mislead them into believing that ayisoze ibulawe; we had great teams like Zimbabwe Saints and many others that fell by the way side and Highlanders has reached such crisis (but) we cannot allow it to fall in our hands,” said Sibanda.

He said painful decisions might have to be taken and that can include decisions that have previously been viewed as taboo at Highlanders.

“If they are the ones to save Highlanders and keep the family together, we might have to do it,” he said.