Indeed, the sports budget have come at a right time to provide
a shelter for the various sports associations in the country if distributed
equally without any parochial interest and greed.
The Ministry of Sports headed by
Hon. Elvis Afriyie Ankrah should focus on infrastructure developmental
expansions and also ensure a proper account and documentation of the
distribution of the money to the heads of the sporting disciplines so that
others would not used such yardstick to amass wealth all in the name of “do you
know me”.
Before that, I think it will be
very prudent for the ministry to bring out what they intend to do with the
budget in the public domain for easily understanding and proper debate.
In doing this, ministry must take
into account that the sports budget is not meant for only football rather all
disciplines even to the least sport.
Away from that, the sports budget
must be utilized judiciously in urgent projects aimed at unearthing, grooming
and preparing athletes in all the 36 sporting disciplines that intend to sell
nation in any competition worldwide.
In my view, when there is a
multipurpose sports stadium it will not do the nation no harm than living a
legacy for current athletes to repeat chalking important success compared to
their predecessors for other future generations to follow suit since acquiring
it will harbor and prepare players within the disciplines to have access to
quality training facilities than imploring obsolete ways of training.
Aside the multipurpose, there
should a concession on building a national gym center in all regions to keep
the players fit, accrue revenue for the
nation likewise putting an end to transporting players to the nations capital
since such facility is unavailable to them in their respective regions.
Another eminent area of importance
is the development of athletics. Gone
were those when athletics used to be a very hot
sporting commodity as people in those days were poised to see Leo Mills,
Grunt just to mention a few down to Aziz Zakari, Ignatius Gaziah, Vida Anim,
Margaret Simpson and others.
But today, the association is in
shambles to the point of being faced with financial crisis making it even
cumbersome for them to organize or attend programmes to expose the players for
developmental sake.
This is related to all sporting
disciplines; boxing, tae kwando, swimming, handball, volley, hockey, tennis,
golf, badminton, chess, wrestling and not for getting horse racing.
The sports budget will be useless
if it does look down upon the youth across the length and breadth of the
country related to our local league. As a way of empowering the youth with
jobs, there should be target to build another world standard stadium in another
region apart from the ones present. When this idea is conceived, worked on and
implemented it will offer jobs to the youth and in the long or short run reduce
the high ratio of employment.
Again when there is a perfect
stadium in another region it will expose clubs to modern usage of pitches to
enhance their style of play hence pulling spectators to fill the stadium to its
capacity anytime there is a match at hand.
Beside this point, the budget should factor in developing
talents in our schools especially the grass root by empowering and encouraging
sport masters or physical education teachers to dedicate their time in the
scouting and discovering of talents through continuous and efficient
organization of sporting programmes.
Notwithstanding that, there should an allocation of funds to
ex- gallant Black Stars players who did their best to raise the flag of Ghana
some years back.
Of course our football national teams made of both male and
female teams must not be left out since football has always been the passion of
the nation.
When this is proportionally distributed it will do
the country more good than before.
By Ebenezer Zor (ezee)
