President of the Ghana Olympic Committee (GOC), Ben Nunoo Mensah has appealed to the National Sports Authority (NSA) to recruit coaches for the various sports disciplines.
He said the National Federations spend a lot in training national team coaches but because they are not fully employed, it becomes difficult for them to give out their best.
The President made this appeal during the launch of the ongoing Olympic Solidarity funded volleyball project in Accra.
He said “just as we have a national football coach paid by the state, it would also be proper to at least have a national coach for volleyball, badminton, athletics, weightlifting etc.”
He added that after spending lots of resources on coaches and other technical departments of these Federations, the country does not benefit from them because they are unemployed.
In a quick response, the Director General of the NSA, Robert Sarfo Mensah said the NSA has made a formal request to the Ministry of Finance (MoF) to enable it hire over 100 coaches for the various national teams across different sporting disciplines in the country.
He said his outfit was still lobbying for clearance but was yet to hear from the finance ministry saying “as you know, we are supposed to have coaches for the all the different national teams who would be tasked to help unearth talents as well as develop the sport.
“So we decided to write to the Ministry of Finance to hire coaches for our national sides because as it stands now, we are short of over 250 staff and we hope it work as planned.”
In a related development, the GOC President has commended the NSA and the Ministry of Youth and Sports (MoYS) for supporting the various national teams for their international competition.
He said the two bodies especially the Sports Ministry have proven not be a ministry for only football by assisting national teams of weightlifting, volleyball, athletics, badminton etc to their competitions.
