The Deputy Minister for Youth and Sports, Hon. Vincent Oppong Asamoah (MP) has pleaded to the institutions of higher learning to design their curricula to suit athletes.
He said the curricula should be designed to give room for adequate training time alongside their academic work as it is practiced in the USA and other European countries.
The Deputy Minister made this appeal during the 4th edition of the Stellar Logistics Western Region Sports Awards night held at the plush Best Western Atlantic Hotel, Takoradi.
He said talents identified at the Senior High School who end up at the tertiary level and with a population of about 40,000 the country cannot boost of a single national champion.
He said this has been a great source of worry to the ministry which propelled the Hon. Sports Minister to meet the Director of Sports in the various tertiary institutions in that respect.
The Deputy Minister noted that University of Ghana has positively accepted this challenge and some successes are being recorded.
He therefore encouraged other universities and other tertiary institutions to give chances to talented students to develop their sporting talents to win laurels for the country and their livelihood.
Hon. Oppong Asamoah also added the ministry is feverishly working at providing additional sporting facilities to enhance access to sports infrastructure in the country.
He also touched on the 15,000 seating capacity stadium being constructed at Cape Coast with the support from the Chinese government saying it will be completed by August 2015.
He said work will also commence on the construction of a proposed districts sport arenas in some selected districts next year.
He explained that the arenas will have facilities for football, athletics and also multipurpose courts and sports halls for indoor games.
He again acknowledged that financing of sports in the country has always been a challenge to government for the past years and the ministry is making efforts to find alternatives of funding sports.
The ministry held a conference on sports financing where they invited about three hundred stakeholders to deliberate on the way forward and they agreed that there was the need for increased participation of corporate Ghana in financing sports.
He applauded the award winners and encouraged them not to rest on their oars and also assured the organizers of the ministry’s collaboration with them to ensure that the award is replicated in the other regions.