GFA president Kurt Okraku charges Referees bureau to develop pathway for children in remote areas

President of the Ghana Football Association, Kurt Edwin Simeon-Okraku has charged the Referees Department to come up with a clear career pathway to help develop children in remote areas who are interested in refereeing.

He was speaking at a one-day training workshop for referee managers from the ten Regional Football Associations.

The leadership of the refereeing fraternity should endeavour to give Ghanaian citizens who are interested in refereeing a clear developmental pathway that can enable a child, living in the remote areas of Ghana, who is interested in the noble art of refereeing, the opportunity to realize their dreams to become Referees without needing any external influences such as so-called pushers, godfathers or godmothers’ he emphatically said.

There should be a clear pathway for a child interested in refereeing to go all the way to become a FIFA referee”.

He also talked about the need to re-train, motivate, and encourage former referees who fell out of the industry following the Anas expose.

“So, just before 2019, due to the Anas expose, we lost 78 referees!! That was a big blow to Ghana Football!! Since then, we have tried to regroup and find workable ways through which we can encourage the ones that have been retained and also motivate and get people to be interested in the art of refereeing” President Simeon-Okraku added.

The one-day training workshop was spearheaded by Referees Manager Alex Kotey with support from Technical Director Professor Joseph Kwame Mintah.