Sports Ministry is broke! — Laments minister
The Minister of Youth and Sports, Nii Lantey Vanderpuye, has painted a rather gloomy picture about inadequate resources to fund sporting activities this year, revealing that his ministry had just about GH¢4 million to utilise for 2016.
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He told the media last Monday that the inadequate budgetary allocation to the ministry demanded a more prudent use of resources, ingenuity, as well as support from the corporate sector to stand on its feet to deliver the developmental needs of the sports sector.
“The other issue I want to talk about, which is critical to me, is that we are broke, and am saying this because tomorrow somebody would accuse me of not saying it as it is,” Mr Vanderpuye said when he addressed a forum organised by the Sports Writers Association of Ghana at the Accra Sports Stadium.
He explained that the ministry’s financial position had been made worse because its account had been garnished by the Accra High Court following its failure to pay a contractor who constructed sporting gyms at various stadia.
“In fact, we are in a critical situation,” added the minister who lamented that the budget for all national teams alone was bigger than the ministry’s slice of the national cake.
He disclosed that the ministry secured a total of GH¢22,560,058 from the Finance Ministry as its budget allocation for the year and out of this, GH¢11.9 million would go into the payment of salaries of staff of the ministry, National Sports Authority and the youth, subvented agencies and other agencies under the ministry.
The minister explained that of the remaining amount of GH¢4 million would go into expenditure of goods and services, while another GH¢3 million would go into the various youth agencies under the ministry.
Lamenting the dire straits confronting the sports sector, the minister noted that GH¢26 million was needed for Ghana’s Olympic campaign, which was not available, with an extra GH¢42 million required to meet the budgetary needs of all national teams.
On infrastructure development, Mr Vanderpuye said the government’s objective of constructing modern sporting facilities in all regions and districts was being realised and added that his outfit would work together with the MMDAs to properly utilise the five per cent quota alloted to social service in their budget for sporting infrastructure.
The SWAG president, Mr Kwabena Yeboah, pledged the association’s support for Mr Vanderpuye because it was the greatest hope and expectation of the sports media that the minister succeeded because a success for him would be alluded to the sports media of which the minister was a product.