The Executive Committee of the Ghana Weightlifting Federation(GWF) led by their President, Mr. Ben Nunoo-Mensah, has paid a courtesy call on the Minister of Youth and Sports, Hon.Nii Lantey Vanderpuye, in his office to congratulate him on his appointment and also introduce to him the Executive Committee members.
Ben Nunoo-Mensah told the Minister, they had come to congratulate and to wish him well. The President of the GWF said “if there was anyone who could do the work better at the Youth and Sports, it is you.”
He said they were happy to have the Hon Minister who was their former Patron as the substantive Minister and recounted the federation’s achievements to date; the building of training centre and Youth programme offices for the federation within the Accra Sports Stadium.
Ben Nunoo-Mensah stated that the main focus of the GWF is to organize training for the kids in primary schools to whip up their interest in the sport which is part of their 4-year development agenda.
Welcoming the members of the Ghana Weightlifting Federation, the Hon. Minister said weightlifting is a sport that demands a lot of technical knowledge and was happy that a lot of people are now showing interest in weightlifting and urged the federation to do more of their outreach.
He intimated that morphological build of a person determines what sports they do and therefore the resource available must be used to train the right people.
The Hon. Minister said he was happy that the long held perception of weightlifting being seen as bodybuilding is no longer the case now; people now know the difference. He reiterated the need for the re-orientation of Ghanaians to believe in the other sporting disciplines and urged the weightlifting federation to step up its outreach programmes.
Hon.Nii Lantey Vanderpuye noted that without corporate support, the rest of our disciplines would suffer and called for support and announced that Turkey and Colombia has accepted to support the Ministry with some sporting facilities as well as train some athletes in preparation for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.
He told them the security services have agreed to give thirty percent recruitment quota for sports men and woman with the prerequisite qualification and called on them to identify such people in their federation.He pledged his support for the Federation.