Stars’ budget goes blank
The sour relationship between the Ministry of Youth and Sports and the Ghana Football Association (GFA) has been deepened following a decision by the latter to stop preparing the Black Stars budget with immediate effect.
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This, according to the GFA, is to save itself the trouble of being branded as a corrupt institution by the ministry.
The Vice President of the GFA, George Afriyie, confirmed the FA’s decision yesterday and revealed further that his outfit only presented a skeleton of the budget for the Ghana-Uganda match to the ministry to complete the process.
According to him, instead of presenting a full budget as usual, the GFA merely presented a blank budget for the Stars contingent without corresponding figures, while expecting the ministry to complete the costing.
The GFA vice-president explained that though it had been the norm for the FA to prepare budgets for consideration by the ministry prior to the approval of Cabinet, it was not strange to hand over that role to the Ministry since that responsibility fell within its mandate.
In a seperate interview, the GFA President, Kwesi Nyantakyi, even threatened to relinquish the management of the Black Stars to the ministry.
The GFA and the Ministry have been at loggerheads since Nii Lantey Vanderpuye decided to cut down the Stars’ budget from $1m to about $600,000 per match, leading to the freezing of honorarium for management committee members, among others, to save money to support the other disciplines.
In an interview with Happy FM yesterday, the minister also confirmed receiving the FA’s document but stressed that the cost-cutting measure was not a personal vendetta but a way of ensuring that each discipline benefited from the lean sports budget.
To buttress that fact, he said he recently gave audience to a team of eminent sports administators and some FA officials to brainstorm on ways to improve the strained relationship and also seek the way forward for Ghana Football.
Asked whether the GFA had officiallly notified the ministry about the October 11 international friendly between Ghana and South Africa, the minister answered in the negative.