The Ghana Football Association has announced a GHC 200,000 investment in the training of referees under the ‘Catch Them Young’ initiative for nurturing young talents and raising the standards of officiating in the local leagues.
The GFA boss made this pronouncement at the 29th Ordinary Congress of the Ghana Football Association held at the Great Hall of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) on Monday, July 10, 2023.
The Catch Them Young Policy was designed to identify, educate and train young talents between the ages of 12 -18 to officiate juvenile matches within their regions and it was launched in 2020.
“We introduced what has become so famous not only in Ghana, not only in West Africa but in world football. We introduced the ‘catch them young refereeing policy’ where kids from the ages of 12 – 18 who show the right level of passion are recruited and offered training to be match officials at the tender age of 14. Some of the products of this initiative are already officiating in the division 2 and division 1 games.” Kurt Okraku said
Kurt Okraku pledged a GHC 200,000 investment in referee training.
“We have identified that to leave the burden of training and retraining to be fully funded only by our RFAs (Regional Football Association Chairmen) will be problematic. Our intention is to invest GHC200,000 in the training of the ‘catch them young referees’.He disclosed.
He further added that there will be a monthly allowance for referee managers at the Regional level.
“We have referees managers across all the 10 regions, the past 3 or 4 years they have been working without any monthly support, we want to depart from this. We will support our referee managers in the regions with a token of GHC1,000 a month towards their care” he stated.
Kurt Okraku’s first four-year tenure will come to an end in October, some other top football officials are anticipated to run against him, including Bernard Amofah Jantuah of Berekum Chelsea, former RFA Chairman for the Western Region Kojo Yankah and George Afriyie, a former vice president of the Ghana Football Association.
Story by Rashad Usman Sinah
