Vice president of the Ghana Football Association [GFA], Mark Addo has confirmed that Mohammed Salisu turned down a call up for the Black Stars 2022 World Cup playoff games against Nigeria. The Southampton centre back was expected to earn a call up ahead of the games after failing to show up on countless occasions. However, the promising centre back was not part of the 27-man squad released by Otto Addo for the games. And according to Mark Addo, the player expressly told the Black Stars management that he was not ready to play for the country as he needs more time to decide on his fate. He noted that though the player is tight-lipped over his decision to play for the Black Stars, Ghanaians must remain calm as management is bent on convincing him. “I don’t want to get too much in the details but there has been engagements as to whether he is ready now or not, which apparently he is not,” he told Kumasi based Kessben FM. “Moreover, the time will come if he is ready and the determination will be made.” On the exclusion of some players in the Black Stars squad, Mark Addo who is also the chairman of the Black Stars Management Committee stated that some players had to be dropped due to injury. “Players like Kamaldeen is injured, back injury. Baba is injured with his knee, Jordan has Covid, he was due for a new test. Semenyo was invited but he got injured on Saturday.” The Black Stars have already opened camp in Kumasi gearing up for the game on Friday at the Baba Yara Stadium. The return game will be played at the Abiola National Stadium on March 29. Ghana are chasing their fourth World Cup appearance while the Super Eagles are racing for their 7th appearance.

Some Medium, Small and Micro Enterprises (MSMEs) in the Northern, Northeast and Savannah Regions, who received government’s funds under the COVID-19 support interventions, have testified that the funds have helped to sustain their businesses.

Others also testified that the support had resulted in the growth of their businesses.

This formed part of the findings of a community scorecard on the implementation of the government’s relief packages to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the operations of MSMEs in seven selected districts in the three regions.

The scorecard assessed the government’s COVID-19 support interventions in the areas of information dissemination and public education, application and selection process, benefits and impact, and accountability.

The findings were presented at a meeting in Tamale.

The compilation of the community scorecard was undertaken by the Ghana Developing Communities Association, an NGO, with support from STAR Ghana Foundation and the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office as part of the Baobab Initiative for Social Accountability (BISA) on Government’s Response to COVID-19 project.

The BISA project, implemented from September 2021 to March 2022, sought to assess the impact of government’s support to MSMEs and how effective the government’s support had been from the perspective of the beneficiaries.

The COVID-19 pandemic emerged in the country in March 2019 and brought about disruptions to activities including operations of businesses leading to loss of jobs, collapse of some businesses and a loss to some businesses.

In view of this, the government launched the Coronavirus Alleviation Programme Business Support Scheme (CAP-BuSS) programme and the Ghana COVID-19 Alleviation and Revitalisation of Enterprises Support (Ghana CARES) programme where MSMEs amongst others across the country were to apply to receive some funding to support their operations.

The scorecard also found that while some MSMEs made good use of the funds, others saw it as free money and mismanaged it.

It also found that the application process to receive the funds was not decentralised enough and was characterised by partisan politics and added that there was also no proper needs assessment conducted before the support was given to some applicants.

Following the findings, the scorecard awarded an overall score of 43 per cent to the government the way it implemented its COVID-19 relief packages.

It recommended that announcements on any such support packages should be made through traditional media, social media platforms and other local information centres to increase the reach to many more people, especially the non-literate populations.

Mr Issah Osman, Head of Business Advisory Centre at the Savelugu Municipal Assembly, acknowledged the issues raised as part of the scorecard, saying the lessons learnt would improve delivery of subsequent interventions.

Rita Ntoso, Programmes Officer of STAR Ghana Foundation, said the gaps observed by the scorecard in terms of information sharing and the application process for the government’s COVID-19 support meant that the government must use local information centres to disseminate information on such packages in future.

Alhaji Osman Abdel-Rahman, Executive Director of Ghana Developing Communities Association said state authorities would be engaged on the findings of the scorecard to ensure that they put in place measures to address the situation in subsequent editions.