The Communications Director of the Ghana Football Association (GFA), Ibrahim Saani Daara, has indicated the country cannot continue to accept the demands of the players of the Black Stars with regards to their bonuses.
”…some of these things are unsustainable for the country, if we should continue with the level of continuous increment it will get to a point where we will not be able to sustain it,” he said.
Reports emanating from the local media indicate that the Black Stars are demanding a whopping $18, 000 winning bonus – which is a 30% increase in the reported $15,000 – per player as Ghana seek to perform at the 2014 FIFA World Cup.
But Mr Daara who was tight-lipped on the Black Stars’ winning bonus demand for the World Cup in Brazil agreed on the Citi Breakfast Show that ”some of these things are unsustainable for the country” adding that the GFA is constantly sending the message to the players.
Explaining what the components of the Black Stars budget is, Mr Daara said: ” Basically, what goes into the Black Stars budget will include; the pre-tournament play, scouting, tournament proper (bonus and appearance fees) and then other aspects like delegations (parliamentary delegation,governmental delegation,etc).”
According to him, the fact that a budget is presented for a tournament does not mean everything budgeted for is spent.
”Let me make some point clear here, there is this notion that when the budget is made all the amount of money budgeted for is spent; Let me state clearly that it is just a budget…” he explained.
He cited an example of the 2010 World Cup, where the GFA budgeted for 19 million dollars, but only 9 million dollars was spent saying, “10 million dollars was returned to the government and after the tournament the country had 11 million dollars, so actually we made a profit of about 2 million dollars in our participation of the World Cup.”
Mr. Daara also mentioned that government is only pre-financing the Black Stars, ”the country will not lose any money, it will rather make money.’.
The GFA has proposed a 20 million US dollar budget but there have been a public outcry over the size of the budget in the wake of the nation’s current economic crises and some have even suggested a reduction in the amount.
By: Evans Effah/citifmonline.com/Ghana