Minority Demands Brazil Probe

Hon Isaac Asiamah 
The Minority New Patriotic Party (NPP) has called on Parliament as a body to institute a parliamentary committee of enquiry to look into the allegations of misappropriation of taxpayers’ money to sponsor the national team, Black Stars to participate in the ongoing World Cup which ended on very disgraceful note.

Addressing a press conference, a ranking member of Youth, Sports and Culture, Isaac Kwame Asiamah, said the Minority sees the parliamentary of enquiry as very important. The Minority therefore noted that to unravel most of the ‘secret’ dealings that went on at the World Cup, a motion had been filed in Parliament on Ghana’s poor performance at the World Cup with accusations of bad handling of government sponsoring Ghanaian supporters in Brazil and other ‘money issues’.

‘We want to call on Parliament as body charged with the responsibility of ensuring accountability to act expeditiously on this very important matter,’ Isaac Asiamah noted.

Hon Asiamah also said that President Mahama’s call for a committee to be set up by the Ghana Football Association to examine what went wrong in Brazil in order to correct the wrongs in the future is completely misplaced because such committees have been previously set up to investigate various improprieties at the Ministry of Youth and Sports at the expense of the overburdened taxpayer but nothing has come out of those committees.

The Minority therefore wants the President to rather institute a ministerial committee of enquiry since a lot of what the Minority described as ‘rot’ emanated from the Ministry of Youth and Sports with particular reference to the appearance fees for the Black Stars and government’s sponsorship for supporters.

‘It is instructive to know that the probe into the Maputo All African Games scandal in 2011 exposed managerial incompetence, institutionalised corruption and organisation rot at the National Sports Authority,’ Hon Asiamah said, stressing that up to date no action has been taken against those officials who were named in the report in terms of prosecution.

He also noted that the ministerial impact assessment and review committee on the Ghana Employment and Entrepreneurial Agency (GYEEDA) has also become a fiasco, which is an indication that the government has always hidden behind the committees of enquiry to squander public funds with impunity.

The Minority also asked government to tell Ghanaians the expenditure breakdown of the allocation of private sector contributions towards Ghana’s participation in the 2014 World Cup as well government’s contribution to Ghana’s participation in the World Cup.

‘As Ghanaians, we want answers as to how many public servants used State funds to go to Brazil, how much in total was spent on each supporter, how many officials government sponsored to Brazil, how much government spent on the so-called ‘ambassadors’, why the government failed to pay the appearance fees before the departure as promised, how much the government gave to each supporter for accommodation and meals per day while in Brazil and how much it cost the nation to airlift $3 million cash to Brazil,’ the ranking member said.

Hon Asiamah also asked the government to tell Ghanaians whether there was a planning committee for the World Cup and what the terms of reference were, stressing the debacle that befell Ghana at the World Cup is also a clear manifestation of President Mahama’s incompetence, mediocrity and lack of prudence in the management of the affairs of the nation.

By Thomas Fosu Jnr