$330,000 ex gratia brouhaha:The money is no big deal

The president of the Ghana Football Association (GFA), Kwesi Nyantakyi, has defended the payment of $15,000 each to 22 members of the FA’s Executive Committee (ExCo) and said the amount was raised from the association’s internally generated funds.

He explained that there was nothing wrong for the football controlling body to pay its hardworking members after working for four years, describing them as “the best resource of the GFA who generate ideas for the running of the country’s football”.

The payment of a total of $330,000 as ex gratia to outgoing ExCo members has been widely criticised as being excessive, particularly as the FA has financial challenges, with critics saying the money could be better channeled into other development projects of the FA.

In an interview with the Graphic Sports yesterday, Mr Nyantakyi said, like many organisations, the GFA must also pay its workers and, therefore, there is nothing strange about the FA paying the people who generate the ideas to run Ghana football.

He defended the amount paid to the ExCo members as reasonable. “This is even small; members of FIFA take $300,000,” he said, adding that the decision to pay ExCo members was taken at a GFA congress for which the first payment was made in 2011.

Since the news broke about the ex gratia payments, some of the beneficiaries, particularly Messrs Kudjoe Fianoo, Osei Kwaku Parma and George Afriyie, have strongly justified the bonus in spite of the public backlash at the huge sums doled out at a time the FA claims financial constraints has prevented it from fulfiling some of its key responsibilities, including outstanding payments to referees.

In the issue of the FA’s indebtedness to the referees, Mr Nyantakyi gave an assurance that his outfit was doing everything possible to pay the match officials whom, he admitted, were an integral part of the association.