Ghana to spend 100m on tennis tournament

Accra, Feb. 26, GNA - Ghana is to spend 100 million cedis to host the 13th African Junior Tennis Championship from March 27 through to April 8, this year.

The amount is to cater for the total face lifting of the Accra Sports Stadium Sports Hall as well as painting, provision of a seating arena, lighting facilities and a cooling system.

Alhaji Rashid Bawa, Minister of State at the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports disclosed this to the GNA Sports when together with Mr Albert Agbozo, Acting Chief Executive of the National Sports Council they visited the Black Loppers, the national table tennis team at their training session on Thursday.

The Minister said his outfit was sourcing for support to meet the basic needs of the 40 players in camp to boost their morale in order to improve on their performance and achieve success at the championship. He said aside the 100 million cedis, the ministry was spending an additional 90 million cedis for the provision of kits for the team, categorized under 15, under 18 and under-21 for both the male and female divisions.

The Tennis Association is billed to take delivery of equipment for the tournament being supplied by the International Table Tennis Federation at the Kotoka International Airport later today (Thursday). The equipment would be used to develop the game in the country after the tournament.

At the training session watched by the GNA Sports, all five coaches headed by Vincent Arhin were busy smoothening the rough edges of the young players for the big showdown. This is the first time Ghana is hosting the tournament.

Each country is expected to present four players each at the two divisions (the under 18 and under 21), except at the under-15 level where just a player each will represent his or her country. Officials however, say Ghana being the host country could be given a special consideration to feature one or two additional players at the under-15 level.