Ghana’s Minister for Youth and Sports Hon Elvis Afriyie Ankrah has issued a directive to the chief director of his ministry to ban the formation of new supporters unions who seek to cheer Ghana’s national teams during competitions.
Several groups of supporting unions have sprung up in the country in recent years with the government having to sponsor large numbers of its group members to tournaments outside the country.
With many of these fans preparing to travel with the Black Stars to Brazil for the World Cup, the sports minister has insisted that not a dime of government money will be used to transport fans to Brazil to support the Black Stars at the 2014 World Cup.
The move by government has enraged many of these groups but the sports minister says the government has not changed its mind and they have even issued a directive to ban the formation of such groups.
“I know the supporters unions are not happy, unfortunately I don’t have too much good news, government is not going to spend 1 cedi on supporters union for this world cup so let me once again use this platform”,
“In fact over the past so many months or so I had to get the chief director to issue an edict to stop new supporters unions been registered because almost everyday we are getting new supporters union been registered so we’ve stopped them,” He told Reporters at the weekly ‘Meet-the-Press’.
Expressing his unhappiness at the turn of events, he said he wished many more fans could be airlifted but resources are limited and more so, the negative publicity over the issue have compelled government to take that action. Many Ghanaians had been looking forward to travelling to Brazil to watch the senior national team, the Black Stars, on the government’s ticket as was done in 2010 when many fans had the luxury of being transported to Brazil free of charge to cheer the Stars.