The Director-General of the National Sports Authority (NSA), Professor Peter Twumasi, has justified the new maintenance fees to be charged for the usage of NSA facilities by the Ghana Education Service (GES) Inter-collegiate and district sports competitions and the Ghana clubs.
The NSA recently adjusted the prices for the usage of its facilities by the GES for sporting competitions. It is now GHc20,000 per day from the previous charge of GHc2000 per day, which was woefully inadequate.
Justifying the current charge for sporting competitions by second-cycle schools, the NSA boss asserted that funds were needed to carry out maintenance works and insisted that the GHc2,000 charged then was not sufficient to maintain the facilities properly.
“For over 15 years we have been charging the same fees, and this is not helping our cause. The GES makes more than enough and must provide a fraction for the maintenance of the infrastructure,” he told Graphic Sports in an interview last Monday.
Aside the GHc20,000 to be charged as a facility user fee, users of the NSA facilities are expected to deposit an additional GHc10,000 as a refundable insurance guarantee in case there is any damage to any of the facilities.
“The GHc10,000 is like a form of insurance money you give to us so that when there are excesses in sanitation, water and seats by the students we use it to defray the cost but if there are no extra damages or problems then we refund it back to you,” he said.
For the premier league clubs, he said they were yet to bring out the amounts to be charged as well as that of the second and third-tier clubs.
According to him, the amount to be charged will be based on certain factors and matches will be categorised based on crowd capacity, the nature of the venue and gate proceeds.
“Not all matches have equal number of spectators at the stadium. We also have some matches that are tough encounters while others have low crowd and record low proceeds so that will also inform the disbursement of the money accrued at the gates by stakeholders,” he stated.