The Coalition for Ghana Sports, COFOGS, a sports related pressure group, wishes to express reflective thanks to the Minister for Youth and Sports, Hon Mahama Ayariga for slashing the bonuses of the Senior National team, the Black Stars ahead of the impending Africa Cup of Nations slated for Equatorial Guinea.
News that, each player will receive a flat match appearance fee of US$ 5,000 per game at every level including the Group, Knockout and medal stages are refreshing, to say the least.
Even though we deem the proposed reward of US$ 60,000 if the team wins the tournament in Equatorial Guinea, as outrageous, we believe it is much reasonable and a commendable start towards ensuring prudent expenditure on the team.
The 30% bonuses proposal for each member of the Management team is also in order.
Considering that, at the last tournament in South Africa, the budget included a US$ 10,000 for winning a match at the Group stage and US$ 15,000 in the semi-finals, COFOGS believes Ghana by this decision, is making progress in our bid to checking wasting state resources on the team.
We are optimistic that the decision would not affect the team in anyway because, in 2013 the winning bonuses of the Super Eagles of Nigeria was slashed from $10,000 to $5,000 and yet Nigeria won the cup.
The government of the Ivory Coast has also just slashed the budget for the Elephants to AFCON 2015 by offering only 10% of that countries FA budget.
COFOGS will also want to charge the Ministry to insist on the team camping in Gabon which is closer to Equatorial Guinea and not adhere to the proposal of camping the team in Abu Dhabi or Spain.
We will also want to urge the Ministry not to make provision for additional costs for camping the team apart from the CAF allocation for the 30 man list to the competition.
Finally, COFOGS understands that the final list of players is expected to be released by 18th December, 2014.
We will like to urge the Ministry to ensure that the agreed bonuses are discussed and agreed in detail with the yet-to-be-released 23 players for the tournament.
