C.K Akonnor has been paid – Sports minister sets records straight
Ghana’s Minster for Youth and Sports, Hon. Mustapha Ussif has laid to rest the long standing controversy over the salary of Black Stars coach C.K. Akonnor.
The industrious Sports Minister says the Black Star manager is not owed salaries for the year 2021.
“I can say categorically that since I assumed office I have paid the coach seven months of his salary, and I have been in office for six months,” Ussif told Joy Sports.
The media space in recent times has been impregnated with reports that the Ghana manager has not been paid his salaries.
Akonnor in a media engagement on zoom revealed he has not been paid for seven months.
But in a recent interview with Joy Sports, the Minister, who succeeded Isaac Asiamah in March this year, has unequivocally stated Akonnor has been paid.
“It is important I clear this issue,” Ussif, began in an interview with Joy Sports.
“The impression should not be created as if the last seven months, nothing has been done with the coach’s salary,” he continued.
The Minister, however, was quick to say that the coach is owed some salaries which his office inherited from the previous administration and efforts are underway to pay all those debts.
“The real fact is that,” he began “before I assumed office, there were outstanding payments for the coach, so I engaged the coach and the GFA (Ghana Football Association) and I said it is not acceptable to be owing our coaches when they are delivering, especially when he has qualified us to the AFCON.
“So, every effort I am going to make to ensure we don’t compile additional debt, I will do it while taking steps to clear the outstanding that’s why the outstanding is seven months.
“It is not as if this year, the coach has not been said, that’s not the fact of the matter.
“He has been cleared this month and we don’t owe him anything for this year, but there’s an outstanding debt of which we are making efforts to clear,” he clarified.
Earlier this year, CK Akonnor, and his predecessor, Kwasi Appiah were paid by the Ministry of Youth and Sports a combined $230,000.
For Appiah, it was monies due him before his contract with the national team expired in December 2019, but Akonnor, according to the Minister, it was a regular payment made to him, and that part of his outstanding arrears will be paid when his next salary is due later this year.
“It was a regular payment that was made for this year, while we are clearing the outstanding debt. Any time we are paying him his monthly salary, we will make sure part of the outstanding debt is also paid,” he stated.
CK Akonnor was appointed head coach of the Black Star in February 2020.
He’s since qualified Ghana to the 2022 AFCON to be staged in Cameroon and is set to start the journey for the 2022 World Cup to be hosted in Qatar on Saturday,
