Regional Minister calls for gender equality in Sports

Wa, Dec. 6, GNA - Mr Ambrose Dery, Upper West Regional Minister has called on Sports Administrators to ensure that the negative customary practices that rated girls below boys were not carried into sports.

He said if the country wants to see an all-round development of sports, there was the need for both male and female sports personnel to be given equal opportunities without any show of biased favours. Mr Dery said this when he opened a six-day course on various technical aspects of football, organized by the Ghana Football Association (GFA) as part of its Four-year Business and Development programme.

About 100 youths who participated in the course, were taken through basic football administration, coaching, refereeing in football and sports medicine.

The Regional Minister cautioned football fans that no coach worth his salt will deliberately loose matches since that will mean the one is taking his job for granted and therefore urged the supporters to always be patient and allow the coaches the peace of mind to deliver their set goals.

Physical Education, he regretted was of late not being given its desired attention in schools and therefore called for a reversal of the situation to ensure the healthy development of the youth. Mr George Dasoberi, National Coordinator of the Programme, giving an outline of the plan, said the country has been divided into three sectors comprising the Southern, Middle and Northern sectors with each headed by a Director.

The Director is expected to supervise the unearthing of talents for the various national youth teams after which the best players among them would be selected for Schools of Excellence to be established soon. Mr Malik Jabir, Director of the Northern Sector in an answer to a question as to why Ghana lacked potent goal scorers in football, said the current crop of players were not undertaking personal rehearsals to acquire the skills of goal scoring and relied more on coaches to do the tricks for them.

Although a coach could teach the player the technique of goal scoring, the player needed to work extra hard to develop the talent. "A striker should always follow the ball in the goal area of opponents and must be mindful that in the course of doing so he will receive severe knocks", he pointed out. 06 Dec. 06