NSA budget diverted to national football teams – Kpenge

The Director General of the National Sports Authority (NSA), Joe Kpenge, has said he suspects the various national teams of being behind the NSA’s financial woes as the authority has not been able to receive budgetary support from the Finance Ministry.

The NSA has been vilified over the years for failing to maintain the nation’s major sports facilities, with most of them needing urgent attention, but the director blames the institution that provides funds for the delays.

“The Ministry of Finance has not released our budget. I realise that if you go into the national football teams, we have about 10, but you don’t see them on the sports budget. But they are financed, so I suspect it is the budget of the National Sports Authority for example that is given to them,” he stated.

“If I prepare a budget based on my programmes, including maintenance, and I send it the Ministry of Youth and Sports and they send it to the Finance Ministry who present it before parliament and then we end up not getting it, who do I put the blame on?

The NSA was recently accused of lacking a maintenance culture following power disconnection to the new Cape Coast and Accra sports stadia.