Thursday , March 28 2024

MY TAKE ON YOUTH AND SPORTS- ABEKA WANLOVE

Youth and sports has always being known to be the major contributor to the development of every country’s economy, individual and organization as well as the world as a whole.
Aristotle a greek philospher and scientist once said and I quote ” GOOD HABITS FORMED AT YOUTH MAKE ALL THE DIFFERENCE” and Pele a Brazilian world known soccer legend and icon also once said and I quote ” THE MORE DIFFICULT THE VICTORY, THE GREATER THE HAPPINESS IN WINNING” and that’s 100% true and clear.

Moreover under the leadership of H.E John Dramani Mahama, the youth and sports sector is on the verge of collapsing due to the lot of challenges and problems the sector is encountering at the moment in the country Ghana. To the extent that the youths are not actively involving themselves in the nation building due to the issue of unemployment and the sports sector have collapsed completely because of the lack of patronage by the citizens. His achievements in the youths and sports sector is not encouraging and has performed abysmally as bulleted below :

* Collapsing of all social interventions which was introduced under the President Kufuor’s regime which will provide employments for the youths in the country and has replaced with a corrupt and failed interventions with no aim of providing employments for the youths but rather misusing state funds and resources.

Corrupt interventions such as:

– GYEEDA replacing the NYEP with the sole aim of providing employments for the youths but failed and misused an amount of $100 million dollars which was invested in providing employments for the youths.

– SADA created to also provide the youths in the savannah area zone with employments but failed and rather misused an amount of $100 million dollars which was also invested in the provision of jobs for the youths

– LEAP established purposely to empower the youths against poverty by providing them with jobs which will help them reduce the level of poverty in their families as well as the communities but was given an amount of $50 million dollars by the world bank for that agenda but gave it out to the old age whiles the youths are ignored and the rest of the money into their pockets
* Corruption saga in the just ended 2014 fifa world cup in Brazil which government officials spent $20 million dollars for just the country’s participation in the tournament which other countries that participated never spent such a huge sum of money
* Construction of the Tema sports stadium which will have a 60,000 seater capacity and will cost the state an amount of $6.5 billion dollars whiles the construction of FNB stadium in south africa with a 94,736 seater capacity costs the south african government an amount of $440 million dollars
* Not paying the women’s national team with their bonuses and their money for the participation in their just ended tournament

This clearly shows that Prez Mahama government have failed the good people of Ghana and is not ready to serve them especially the youths and have pumped into the youth and sports sector million and billions of cedis and dollars in their budgetary allocation but still there is no improvement in that sector.
On the other hand, during President Kufuor tenure in office, there was great and massive improvement in the youth and sports sector which made Ghanaians especially the youths feel at eased and the sporting sector was alsi functioning effectively and the patronage was very high. The achievements of Prez kufuor in the youth and sports sector are bulleted below:
* Introduction of social interventions with the sole aim of providing employments to the youths basically and the reduction of unemployment and poverty rates in the country. Social interventions such as:
– NYEP which was established in 2006, but in may 2007 the program had employed 95,000 youths in various modules such as agric, phone repairs, health extension officers, youth in waste management etc.

– MASLOC was also established in 2006 with the sole responsibility of implementing the government of Ghana’s microfinance programme targeted at reducing poverty and creating of jobs and wealth. This was what they did to reduce poverty and to also create jobs and wealth:
• Gave out tricycles to youths in the northern sectors
• 45 central region queens benefitted from the GHC 44,000 masloc loans
• Distributed GHC 3 million loans to Brong Ahafo Traders
– LEAP was also established in 2006 with the sole aim of reducing the poverty rate and was able to achieve it aims by reducing the poverty rate from 52% in 1992 to 28% in 2006
* Construction of the Essipong and Tamale sports stadia with a 20,000 seater capacity
* Rehabilitation of the Ohene djan and Baba yara sport stadia to help make the official Ghana’s soccer league very interesting
* Introduction of the Presidential Special Initiatives (PSI) on cassava, palm oil etc which brought about the creation of direct and indirect jobs at the ayensu starch and benso palm oil company
* Hosting of the CAN 2008 in the country brought a great improvement and patronage in our soccer leagues
* Introduction of free zone model which employed youths annually into the various sectors and agencies such as health, security etc
* Construction of the state of te the art wood village at sokoban, kumasi for the anloga carpenters which provided both direct and indirect jobs for the youths.
Thank you

SIGNED:

ABEKAH EBENEZER

(Abekah wanlove)

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