Sports Minister on the warpath?
Sports Minister Nii Lante Vanderpuye has been waxing lyrical about his revolutionary venom to cleanse the sector of the rot he has inherited since his appointment to the ministry some four months ago.
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At every given opportunity, he has not failed to recount the financial challenges facing the ministry as a result of the maladministration at the ministry, the National Sports Authority, as well as the sports disciplines.
Indeed, those allegations of financial malfeasance at various levels of sports were well articulated by some of his predecessors and we cannot dispute the rehash by Nii Lante.
However, what must be curious to us is the minister’s reference to the effect that the old administrative staff at the ministry could be held responsible for some of the rot in Ghana sports and that with 80 per cent of such officials out, he now had relatively fresh hands to prosecute his new agenda.
We are delighted to hear this, but we think that the minister was short on detail and should go further to tell the public about the nature of the rot at the ministry itself and who the perpetrators are.
Just throwing allegations about cannot be the way to go in this business of bringing financial propriety to bear in the activities of the Sports Ministry.
For instance, the minister spoke about the sector being indebted virtually to everybody, such that a debit amount of GH¢16 million had been on its books, but he failed to say whether some of the old staff mentioned above were responsible for the debts and the steps taken or being taken to reclaim them.
We have also heard the minister say on various platforms that he had cancelled the payment of honoraria to management members of the various national teams until he was convinced why he should do anything to the contrary.
We think that the minister needs no convincing by anybody for him to appreciate their roles or the kind of work members of the management teams do to justify some pecuniary reward.
How big or small the reward should be is where the question lies and which, doubtless, had been the bane of previous ministers to the sector.
Thus, even though every Ghanaian wants payment of such monetary rewards to be streamlined, so that they do not overstretch the sports budget, deciding not to pay anything at all must as well be to call for the dissolution of the management teams.
Without delay, we expect the minister to pronounce the immediate dissolution of the management teams of the national teams since, in his estimation, they are undeserving of any reward, just as he has cancelled ‘protocol payments’ in any sports endeavour.