Information gathered by Today indicates that the Accra and Kumasi Sports Stadia have been put up for privatization but managers of the facilities were tit-lip over the matter.
A deep throat source at the Sports Council hinted that some organizations have already been contacted in a bid to take over management of the state assets.
The source further noted that plans to privatize the country’s stadia have been on the drawing board since 2009.
Meanwhile, Deputy Minister for Youth and Sports, Hon. Vincent Oppon Asamoah to extent confirmed what our source told us when he was answering question on the floor of Parliament about what his Ministry was doing to stop the fast deteriorating rate of the country’s stadia, especially the Accra Sports Stadium.
According to the Deputy Minister, the Sports Council had presented a detailed proposal on what they termed Public Private Partnership (PPP) which was been studied by ministry.
The Deputy Minister explained that the ministry’s meager annual budgetary allocation was not enough to enable them undertaken repair works of such magnitude on the nation’s sports edifice. “Even the entire budgetary allocation for the year 2016 cannot complete the renovation works at the Accra Sports Stadium alone” he added.
A further check at the ministry revealed that the proposal for the so called PPP as the Sports Council want us to believed was only for the Accra and Kumasi Sport Stadia.
A visit to the Accra Sports Stadium reveals a sorrowful state as the rate of deteriorating of the physical structure; seats and fittings in and around were beyond measurable. The situation at the stadium has clearly exposed our lack of maintenance culture as a country.
The questions lingering on the lips of many Ghanaians this Reporter spoke to was that if government with all its resources could not maintain the stadia across the country, how a private entity with meager resource will take care of such huge edifice.
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