Stadium Disaster Fund Committee presents report

The May 9 Stadium Disaster Relief Fund Management Committee on Friday presented its recommendations on how the 2.3 billion cedis collected so far should be disbursed.

Mr J.S. Addo, Chairman, said the thrust of their recommendation was to ensure that the children of the deceased and the permanently incapacitated people did not, as far as possible, suffer serious financial difficulties.

"We do not believe that any of the children should be school drop-outs because of financial constraints. "As a result, he said, the committee proposed an educational scheme based on the Ghana Education Service's "bright but needy children" concept for them.

Mr Addo said the committee had also designed another scheme for the permanently incapacitated and other dependants of the deceased adding, "We hope government will be able to supplement this amount to increase the capital for the scheme to be sustained."

He said that the capital at the Bank of Ghana had been invested to generate sufficient income to sustain the proposed scheme over the next 17 years.

Mr Addo noted that the delay in presenting the Committee's report was due to the detailed analysis of a lot of data collected from the representatives of the deceased and the injured.

He said 15 of the applications were not attended to because of inaccurate information provided while others did not have representatives at all.

Mr Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey, Minister of Information and Presidential Affairs, received the report on behalf of the government and gave the assurance that government would spend about two weeks to study it after which a statement would be issued.

He expressed government's gratitude to the public for their donations saying, they were still receiving more, He commended the committee for their enthusiasm to serve even without any remuneration.

One hundred and twenty-six people died during a stampede at the stadium when police fired teargas during a league match between Accra Hearts of Oak and Kumasi Asante Kotoko.

A commission of enquiry, which investigated the tragedy, has since presented its report and the government has issued a white paper, which said a number of senior police officers at the stadium would be prosecuted.