We’ll improve culture of maintaining sports facilities

Mr Kofi Adams, Minister-designate for Sports and Recreation, has stressed the importance of improving the culture of maintaining the various sporting facilities in the country.
Appearing before the Appointment Committee of Parliament on Thursday, Mr Adams, who is the Member of Parliament for Buem, emphasised the need to utilise Ghana’s sporting facilities by regularly maintaining them despite the limited resources available.
“We’ll not allow any facility to deteriorate to a point that we could even be banned from international competitions.
“So, with the very minimal resources at our disposal, we are going to spend it to maintain what we have while we build new ones also,” he said.
The Sports and Recreation Minister Designate also said the government would also give priority to the development of lesser-known sports and not only football.
“I know arm-wrestling saved us at the 13th African Games but we will be investing in other sporting disciplines where we used to do so well, especially in boxing, athletics, etc.
“It is unfortunate that Ghana would not feature in the recent African Cup of Nations draw; we’ll work very hard to get back to the glory days,” he said.
Asked about how he was going to improve the quality of the Ghana Premier League (GPL), Mr Adams highlighted the need to give players some stipend to ensure retention.
“We’ll also retain players by giving them some stipend so that they don’t go to other countries to play.
“We have talked about things that confront our Premier League. We’ll modernise the Winneba Sports College so that coaches will be trained there to help the league technically,” he stated.
–GNA