NC Special Competition Risks Being Suspended As Referees Lay Down Their Tools

The Ghana Football Association (GFA) Normalization Committee (NC) Special Competition risks being suspended following a letter from the Referees Association of Ghana (RAG) indicating that they are suspending match officiation by referees.

The match officials have been waiting on the organizers of the competition to pay them their outstanding officiating fees per the agreement they have with them. But according to the letter signed by RAG’s general secretary, Mr. Kwao Sampson, the NC has failed to honour their promise and hence their decision to lay down their tools.

RAG stress that they have placed several calls to the various Executive Members of the Normalization Committee but haven’t received any favorable feedback. Hence, their decision not to take charge of any match until the challenge is resolved.

“We write to inform you that the Referees Association of Ghana after carefully deliberating on your failure to redeem your promise of paying all outstanding officiating fees owed our members before close of April 2019, we decided to call on all our members to suspend handling all football match officiating at all levels and at all league centers from tomorrow, 7th May 2019”.

“RAG is compelled to take this tough decision because several letters were written drawing your attention to the unpaid officiating allowances and other things which were consistently not attended to. All RAG members owed are finding it difficult to travel to match venues due to the unpaid allowances”.

Apart from this, RAG National Executives also placed several calls to various Executive Members of the Normalization Committee without any favorable feedback.

As a result of the above, members of Referees Association of Ghana have the firm instruction to SUSPEND all activities relating to match officiating from tomorrow until all issues relating to outstanding unpaid officiating fees and other Referee challenges are immediately resolved”, part of the letter read.

This means that all scheduled midweek matches together with subsequent matches will likely be postponed depending on how the NC responds to this letter.