Who is printing CAN 2008 tickets…?

TURNSTILE NOT A FOREIGN COMPANY …It is a Ghanaian registered company

As preparations for the Ghana 2008 African Cup of Nations (CAN) draw to a close, football lovers all over the world are watching events leading to the scheduled date of January 20 to February 10, 2008 and how well this country is preparing for the tournament.

Currently, construction works on almost all the stadia are nearly complete. The only problem which is being seriously handled by the Local Organizing Committee (LOC) is the Hotels to accommodate the thousands of football fans who will be descending on the country.

One area that is very crucial to any tournament is ticketing and until recently it was not going to be a problem for the LOC until some local Commercial printers started agitating that the contract for the printing of the tickets for the CAN 2008 tournament has been awarded to a foreign firm.

Printing and distribution of tickets for any tournament is very important because it is a major source of revenue for the organizers of the event and therefore it is handled with strict supervision.

It is for this reason that the LOC awarded the contract for the tickets of the tournament to Turnstile Prints and Company Limited, a local commercial and Security printing company with experience in computerized ticketing at tournaments such as the CAN 2008.

In the past, tournaments held here in Ghana have not yielded the desired revenue because of underhand dealings that go on at the entrance of the stadia and the favouring of cronies by stadia officials.

All things said and done, the LOC and the government should be able to meet their overhead costs and also be able to make some gains from the tournament.

For the four stadia built for the tournament to assume international standard, as the event will attract international attention, certain facilities need to be installed and managed to give the stadia and the tournament that international outlook.

The CAN 2008 tournament, which by all standards is international in scope, is supposed to attract global interests, spectators, organizing committees and a whole lot of other facility management experts who will come to Ghana to see what the Ghanaian LOC have been able to achieve.

This is why Turnstile Print Limited has installed manual ticketing system with special facilities in all the stadia.

Apart from the entry points being computerized, special tickets with Hologram and invisible ink are to be used; ticketing counters with POS computers and RFID readers have also been installed with RFID local controller at the Turnstile gates.

All the Turnstile gate controllers and ticketing counters have been networked with centralized servers.

Even though tickets will be sold through the formal outlets, they will also be sold online through the internet while loyalty cards for group matches will also be made available.

The Turnstile ticketing system is a new innovation of ticketing in the country to ensure that football clubs get their due share of gate proceeds by eliminating the middlemen and all the frauds associated with stadium gate proceeds. But the experiment has raised eye brows within a section of Commercial Printing fraternity, who are questioning the rational for awarding the contract for the printing of tickets for the tournament to foreigners. What the agitators do not know is that Turnstile Prints and Company limited is not a foreign company; it is a Ghanaian Registered company with Ghanaian Directors.

Some of the Directors include Mrs. Doris Adjei, who holds B.Sc (Administration) degree in Business Administration and a Diploma in Administration and Management System from GIMPA with considerable experience.

Also on the list of Directors is Mr. Steven Ketu, a Chartered Management Accountant by profession with over ten years experience.

Mrs. Cynthia Araba Agyemang, a business woman is also a Director. The company believes if the new innovation is allowed to work in the country, gate proceeds from local football tournaments and other games that take place at our stadia would improve and our football clubs would end up being financially stronger.