Sports and Recreation Minister Kofi Adams has said the government has reduced the cost of running Black Stars’ two-match qualifying campaigns from nearly $2 million to $1.3 million.
Adams said the reduction formed part of efforts to review sports expenditure and cut costs he considered unnecessary.
Speaking on TV3’s Hot Issues with Keminni Amanor, he said the government had also stopped members of the Black Stars management committee from receiving winning bonuses when the team won matches.
“For example, it didn’t make sense for a management committee member to be paid the winning bonus anytime the team won. We said no, we will not do that,” he said.
Adams added that some categories of officers had also been receiving payments that the ministry considered too high.
“There are some categories of officers we thought that what they were taking was just too high and so we needed to reduce it,” he said.
He said the changes were part of a wider effort to rationalise spending on the national team.
“Relating to the Black Stars, any time they had a two-game qualifier, those times they were spending close to about $2 million. We reduced this to $1.3 million for this campaign,” Adams said.
The minister also defended the government’s decision to disclose budget estimates for sports-related activities, saying transparency should not be treated as an obstacle to performance.
He said the administration had continued to publish the estimates despite criticism over the decision.
“I got insulted for putting out those information. I got insulted for working out to reduce some of the cost centres that we thought could be reduced,” he said.
