Honourable Mustapha Ussif, Minister for Youth and Sports and Member of Parliament for Yagaba-Kubori do agree with those questioning him on the need to spend proposed budget of $25m on national teams assignment.
The idea of generating such budget was met with anger from a section of the masses,whom were left disgranted and amused by the figure sighting economic hardships which included shortage in water supply to most part of the country,low power supply and increase in taxation amongst others as they do believe such sums could be invested into our sports college which is getting rotten in Winneba, developing our grass root football and even uplift the face of our training facility at Prampram.
In response to the above quizzes, the honourable Sports Minister did agree with the assertion that we must have a plan and program to develop our sports from the grass root and moving forward the need to have a short term plan which would aid us in participating in upcoming tournaments.
Hon. Mustapha Ussif also stressed the need for a medium term plan of also developing players from the school sports competitions which serves as a platform to identify talents.
In addition, he did agree to the fact that the sport college at Winneba needs to be revived and a very decent training facility at Prampram must be attended to but irrespective of all these challenges, we must get ourselves prepared for the eight (8) world cup qualifying games.
Hon. Mustapha Ussif in an interview with Godfred Akoto Boafo on the Citi Breakfast show said;
“We can’t fold our arms and pretend not to know that this tournament whatever it is, now that we have qualified we need to be prepared and if we have to prepare we have to be able to mobilize resources to be able to participate in the tournament whiles we also have a plan and program of developing the sports from grass root”
“I agree with them that, yes going forward we need to have a short term plan of making sure that we participate in these tournaments then we also have a medium term plan of also developing players from the grass root like the schools sports competition that we use to participate in and been used as a platform to be able to identify talents”
“I also agree with them that,yes the sports college which is at Winneba we need to revive it, we need to also have a very decent training facility like Prampram but irrespective of all the challenges, do we say because we have those challenges and we have eight (8) matches to play as world cup qualifier, we shouldn’t get ourselves prepared”
“We should be prepared as a nation and I can’t be a minister that has just been appointed and also knowing very well that we have eight matches to play to qualify for the world cup and also if we have to also go to Afcon and do well, we have to also get ourselves prepared”
“As part of the plan what are we doing, we then decided to look at what budget are we going to be able to use to participate in these various tournament that we have”