It is historic. One day Kurt Okraku and his Ghana Football Association team paraded themselves at the offices of the Youth Employment Agency to solicit for support for footballers following the impact of the deadly Covid-19 and the result was overwhelming.
According to FIFA about 90% of the impact of the deadly virus is at the doorsteps of club football and so this intervention – that will see 500 Ghanaian women footballers receive a monthly stipend of GHC 500 for half a year – is indeed game changing.
“It was very refreshing and welcoming when the GFA President Kurt Okraku came to see the Agency that he needed support for the various football activities in the country. In fact, I must commend him and the GFA for bringing such a worthy proposal to the Agency for consideration.” the Chief Executive Officer of the YEA Justin Kodua singled out the effort of the GFA led by President Kurt E.S. Okraku in their quest to seek for support for footballers.
The GFA asked for bread from the YEA but in the end Ghana Sports was served bread and butter as the other sporting disciplines under the NSA are to benefit also from this YEA alleviation programme thanks to the thinking of this current GFA administration.
“Upon meeting with him (Kurt Okraku) together with the Board Chairman of the agency, we deliberated on it and made further consultation with the Ministry of Youth and Sports whereby we decided to expand the proposal from the Ghana Football Association to include other disciples because we didn’t want to restrict ourselves to only football.
We thought about it that the moment we attend to the GFA, Ghana Olympic Committee and others will come and demand that it must also apply to them. In the nutshell, we decided to meet the mother body, the National Sports Authority to have discussions and deliberations on how best the Agency can support our young men and women who have taken sports as their profession” Justin Kodua emphasized during the official signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Wednesday 8th July 2020.
GFA President Kurt Okraku
Based on these facts it it acceptable to say that if Kurt Okraku and his team did not go to the YEA in the first instance, chances are that this package would not have happened and this is the reason why the GFA must take a big part of the glory especially the President Kurt Okraku, he led it all as confirmed by the YEA .
It is true that the government through the YEA and the Ministry of Youth and Sports were the ultimate deciders that made this alleviation plan a reality for our dear women footballers but the GFA were the initiators.
It is said that when you sit idle, you achieve nothing and Kurt Okraku did not sit. He did it.
Gariba Raubil
